


To Forget, Divine

by ice_hot_13



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26399848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: A head injury leaves Javier with amnesia and takes his memories of the past two years - somehow, he's forgotten everything, forgotten his marriage to and divorce from Steve, but forgetting it is to be given a chance to fix it.
Relationships: Steve Murphy/Javier Peña
Comments: 140
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With lots and lots of thanks to ghostlysweetnight on tumblr, whose ideas are making this EVEN MORE SAD. 
> 
> A slight-AU world in which  
> 1\. Amnesia is not very medically concerning, it seems  
> 2\. Columbia is shockingly progressive, having legalized gay marriage in the 1980's. I like to think it's because Escobar insisted on it.

Javier woke up in the hospital. 

It wasn’t immediately alarming, or even surprising, to find himself in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm and a bandaged shoulder that sparked with pain when he shifted it. This was just something that happened, and in the dim, quiet room, with painkillers still fogging his thoughts, there didn’t seem to be much to worry about. He’d been shot before, he’d just been shot again, and the hospital was the best place to be finding himself in, really. None of it managed to worry him. The truly unusual part, the part that reached him even through his pained and drowsy haze, was that he wasn’t alone. 

Steve sat in a chair beside the foot of the bed, slumped over the mattress with his head down on his arm, deeply asleep. If he was supposed to be a lookout, he was doing a terrible job, Javier thought. But, to be fair, the room was peaceful and undisturbed, so maybe Steve had been acceptable at it before falling asleep on the job. Maybe they’d thought Javier was still in danger, and had posted Steve in his room overnight. Javier couldn’t think of any other reason Steve would be sitting at his bedside. 

And – and he was holding Javier’s hand. One arm outstretched, fingers curled loosely around Javier’s, even in his sleep. Steve had such big hands, and how many times had Javier looked at them, wanting Steve to touch him? Javier should let go, he knew, because – because whatever Steve was doing, Javier was surely taking it the wrong way. Taking it – taking it too much, too deeply, and he was determined to blame the painkillers but Steve holding his hand made him feel simultaneously safe and ruined. 

The door inched open, and Javier flinched, but the woman who slipped into the room wore a nurse’s uniform and pushed a small cart ahead of her. 

“Oh good, you’re awake,” she whispered, bringing her cart over to the bed. “I’m here to check your vitals. Are you in any pain?” 

“Uh. Some, yeah.” He withdrew his hand from Steve’s. It was impossible, that the tiny withdrawal made him feel more alone - that was stupid, Steve was still right there, close enough to touch. He hadn’t gone anywhere. Javier wished he was awake, though. 

“This is a nice change,” the nurse said, as she took his blood pressure, “You awake, and him sleeping. I kept telling him he needs rest, but he doesn’t listen.” 

“He doesn’t speak Spanish,” Javier said, and she chuckled. Steve didn’t stir, and Javier just kept looking at him, as the nurse administered more painkillers through Javier’s IV and finished checking his vitals.

Steve was wearing the maroon t-shirt that usually lived in the duffle bag of spare clothes that he kept at his desk, and his hair looked like it hadn’t seen his usual heavy-handed gel treatment in days. How long had he been in Javier’s hospital room? Long enough that nurses were trying to convince him to sleep, apparently. What an idiot, coming to Columbia without speaking Spanish; Javier couldn’t handle looking at him like this, thinking about how Steve couldn’t speak the language, how he was rumpled and tired and in Javier’s hospital room. All of it together threatened to make something in Javier break, which was how he always seemed to feel, when looking at Steve. 

As Javier watched, Steve shifted, sighed, and his fingers curled around nothing. Javier slid his hand closer until it touched Steve’s, and Steve’s fingers closed around his again. It didn’t have to mean anything. Javier was on drugs, he wasn’t accountable for this, and Steve was sleeping, anyways. Javier closed his eyes, and the waves of dizzy, painkiller-addled sleep pulled him in. 

\----

“Go home, Steve.” Carrillo’s voice. Javier blinked awake, finding himself still in the hospital bed, Carrillo’s voice carrying in from the hallway. “Or better yet, go to work.” Javier sat up, though immediately recoiled at the jolt of pain it elicited from his shoulder. They were out in the hallway, the door ajar. 

“Javi is –” Steve began, and fuck if Javier couldn’t picture his stance exactly. His hands would be on his hips, his shoulders hunched. He’d be making the face that accompanied his heated, petulant tone. 

“Fine. Better if you’re not here.” 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Steve spat, and Javier admittedly wanted to echo the sentiment. It was strange, for Carrillo to be so openly hostile towards Steve. And – and it wasn’t better, if Steve was gone. Better in that Javier wouldn’t feel ripped to pieces looking at him, sure, but he’d never let that stop him before. He wanted Steve to come back in, didn’t like the emptiness of the hospital room without him. “For fuck’s sake, Carrillo –”

“You know you aren’t able to deal with him without blaming him for the divorce,” Carrillo sounded _so angry,_ and for a moment, it was all Javier could register. None of the words, just Carrillo’s furious tone. 

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.” 

Javier still didn’t understand. Steve wasn’t divorced. Steve was married to Connie, Steve was married and straight and all kinds of innocuous things that had no business wounding Javier the way they did. Steve wasn’t divorced. 

The door opened, and Steve stalked into the room, although he stopped short when he saw Javier was awake. “Hey,” he said, sounding more startled than anything. 

“What’s Carrillo talking about?” Javier asked, because he didn’t want to talk about how he was awake and fine, because Steve’s impossibly blue eyes were fixed on him and Steve just looked so worried about him. Javier was clearly fine, and that was enough, they didn’t need to talk about it. 

“What?” 

“You aren’t divorced,” Javier said, and Steve – why was he looking at Javier like that? First squinting at him in confusion, nose wrinkling, and then, worse, his eyes widening with what looked like worry, fear. 

“What?” Steve said, again. Quieter. 

“You aren’t divorced, what the hell is he talking about?” Javier’s heart was starting to beat faster, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because Steve was just standing there, completely still. Stricken. The room was silent and smelled like a hospital and the sheets were so white and all at once, everything felt incredibly unfamiliar. When had he even gotten here? 

“Javi,” Steve said, but it was a strangled sort of sound. Behind him, Carrillo leaned through the door, and there was worry on his face, too, a kind that Javier wasn’t used to seeing. Carrillo stepped up beside Steve, and despite their earlier arguing, Steve didn’t even seem to notice him. 

“Do you remember why you’re here?” Carrillo asked, which was ridiculous, and – 

And Javier didn’t remember. 

That was stupid, though, of course he knew. How could he not know? “I was shot,” he said, tilting his head towards his bandaged shoulder. Why couldn’t he remember being shot? What was the last thing he remembered? How would he know what the last thing was, anyways? Was that something he normally knew? 

“Where were we?” Carrillo’s voice was steady, but it was almost worse that way, his forced calm, “What were we doing?” 

“We were in –” Nothing. He had nothing. Where the fuck was he yesterday? Was it yesterday? 

“Okay,” Carrillo kept going, and he was doing the same hand motion he did while negotiating, when they had a gun and he didn’t, palm-down and placating. “Can you tell me who Steve is married to?” 

“Are you fucking serious?” Steve said, but his voice was unsteady and he had put his hands on his hips but kept fidgeting, readjusting his shoulders and moving his hands. 

“Connie. Okay? Can you just tell me what the fuck happened?” Javier demanded, but – but this was worse, somehow. Steve had begun pacing, running his hands through his hair and not looking at Javier. 

“I’ll be right back,” Carrillo told Javier, and Javier tried not to be worried at Carrillo’s fast pace when he left the room. Steve kept fidgeting, kept not looking at him. 

“What?” Javier demanded, and Steve stopped, but the look on his face didn’t make Javier feel any better. 

“You know who I am, right?” Steve asked, but his voice was quiet, small. God, Javier never should have let Steve hold his hand, because suddenly, he didn’t just want to reach for Steve but felt alarmingly like he might actually do it, could practically feel Steve’s hand in his. 

“Of course,” Javier said, maybe a tiny bet gentler than he’d meant to, if only because of the scared, wounded look on Steve’s face, if only because Steve was asking _you know who I am, right?_ as though the entire discussion about him a moment ago hadn’t quite convinced him enough, as though this scared him so much he had to ask outright. Forgetting Steve felt impossible, anyways. He – he was the anchor point Javier’s unmoored heart had finally found. Would Javier even have been the same person anymore, if he forgot Steve? Forgot the almost insuppressible urge to fall open for him, the safeness and the warmth and the stupid desperation to kiss him. Steve didn’t know him at all, if he thought Javier could ever forget him and not know there was a piece of himself missing. 

Carrillo returned with a doctor, and from there, Javier felt himself just – sink. Further and further down, past words like _post-traumatic amnesia_ and _head injury_ , past Carrillo’s permanent frown and Steve’s pacing. 

Javier stayed there, stayed in the dark of his lost time and kept trying to tell himself that it didn’t matter, that nothing important had happened and he hadn’t lost anything, but at one point during the doctor’s explanation, Steve left the room and didn’t come back. 

\--

“It’s two in the morning, Steve.” 

“Time difference.” 

“You’re one hour behind Miami.” Connie paused for a long moment, and it blended into the silence of the entire apartment. Steve was alone, of course he was alone, and silence had become something so heavy. “What happened?” 

Was it saying something, that the only person he could call was his ex-wife? Steve just – he didn’t have people. Whenever he met someone who made him feel something, he did the same thing – fell in love and hurt them. Naturally, he had no one left. 

“Javi got shot.”

“Is he –”

“That’s not – it’s not the bad part.” Steve leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, pushed his free hand into his hair, thought he might shake apart. Why – why did this even matter? Javier would get his memory back, inevitably, and they would be right where they were before, but – but Steve was falling apart, Steve was suddenly so alone. His bed was always empty now, but right now it was breaking him apart, because Javier didn’t even know. “He’s okay, he’s alive and it was just shoulder surgery and he’s fine, but he hit his head, and – and he forgot.” 

“Forgot what?” Connie’s voice had become so soft. She was always good at that, reaching for him despite everything going on. How hadn’t Steve ever seen that for what it was, for a world-stopping, important thing? She could hold his hand even when they were arguing. How had he never learned to do that? 

“He thinks we’re still married.” 

“You and –”

“He thinks I’m married to you, Connie.” His throat closed up at the words and tears stung at his eyes, hot. “It’s like he’s back in those days, and everything after is – I don’t know why it matters so much, but – the way he looks at me, I can’t take it.” Like Javier had woken up in a day two years ago. 

“Oh, Steve.” Connie exhaled the words. “Oh, no.” 

“I don’t know why it matters.” His voice hitched on a sob. How could he be falling apart like this, nothing bad was happening, wasn’t even drunk so he could excuse it, wasn’t doing anything but sitting on his couch and telling his ex-wife that Javier was technically completely fine. Javier would remember him eventually, Steve knew, but right now – he didn’t, he had looked at Steve like nothing had ever happened, like both of them were suddenly the way they’d been before. Steve wasn’t. 

“It’s okay to be upset. It’s like – like you got left alone with all the things that happened, and it’s a lot to handle by yourself.” She paused, and she could probably hear his unsteady breathing, knew exactly how poorly he was handling this. He couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen him cry before. Possibly not. Only ever heard him fall apart over the phone, and only since she’d left Columbia. “I know it must be hard.” 

She was doubtlessly picturing it – picturing them going back, one burdened with the knowledge of what would happen next. If they were back in a Miami bowling alley, and Steve swaggered up to Connie and smiled at her, unknowing – if Connie knew everything that would happen next, would she have given him her real number anyway? Knowing where he would take her, what he would do to her, the way he would drive her to leave? Steve could say for sure that it would have hurt her to be the one burdened with knowing, because now he knew – Javier looking at him, wholly trusting and relieved to see him, knowing nothing about what had come next, it was killing Steve. 

What could he say? There was nothing he could say. “You should get back to sleep,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry I called so late.” 

“You should too, Steve,” she said, and when she said his name, Steve could have been right back in a day before everything with her, too, though she didn’t sound like she’d forgotten, maybe just like she’d healed. It had been nearly two years since she’d left. Maybe she’d found someone new; Steve had made it a point not to find out. He hadn’t told her when he remarried, but he’d told her when he was getting divorced again. Probably should have told her about the marriage, and not just called her late, late at night, sobbing through the first conversation they’d had since she’d left. 

Steve went back to bed, although it was just to stare at the empty space beside him. It had been different, after Connie. He’d started sleeping on her side afterwards, comforted by the scent of her shampoo on the pillow until it faded away. This time – this time he’d stayed on his own side, this time he hadn’t been able to bring himself to clear the top of the dresser of what remained, this time it hadn’t been like when Connie left. She’d packed up all her things meticulously and kissed him on the cheek; she hadn’t taken most of her things while Steve was out of the apartment, he hadn’t come home to forgotten reminders everywhere. Coffee that was a lighter roast than he liked, a belt that wasn’t his, mismatched socks left in the laundry. Handwriting on the grocery list that wasn’t Steve’s. Undeveloped pictures on the film in his camera. A fucking plant. Steve didn’t know how to get rid of any of it. 


	2. Chapter 2

Javier stayed in the hospital for two days, and then insisted on leaving. There was nothing to watch, as far as he was concerned. Watching him wouldn’t make his memories come back, and Javier wanted to go home. Wanted to go back to work, too, because Steve hadn’t come back to the hospital, had left during the doctor’s explanation and stayed gone for the entire two days. 

It wasn’t like Javier  _ needed  _ anyone, but waking up and finding Steve with him had been comforting in a way he ached for. He didn’t want to be alone, he never  _ wanted _ to be alone, but expecting anyone to stay had always felt like too much and for a brief moment, for an  _ important  _ moment, he wasn’t alone. Waking up in a hospital, with no idea how he’d ended up there - he’d found Steve holding his hand, and right up until Steve had left, everything had felt handleable. 

Steve had left, and now, Javier stood in front of his apartment door, with a key that suddenly didn’t seem to work,  _ alone.  _

Maybe he’d moved? How could he not know where he lived? But his key didn’t fit in the lock, and there was a mat on the floor he didn’t recognize. This was the only place that felt familiar, though. This was where he lived, he had been here just – just yesterday, but when had that yesterday actually been? He was tired and his shoulder ached and he wanted to go  _ home.  _

At a loss for what else to do, Javier continued upstairs. Surely Steve hadn’t also moved, surely something had stayed the same. He could have called Carrillo but there had been so much pity on Carrillo’s face, at the hospital. Javier didn’t remember them being more than work friends, but Carrillo was looking at Javier like Carrillo knew him, and Javier wasn’t ready to face that. Javier didn’t even know what had happened to himself, and seeing its aftermath on Carrillo’s face was more than he could handle. Steve was doing the same thing, sure, but Steve  _ knew  _ him. Steve had known him all along, it wasn’t new. 

Javier hadn’t realized how anxious he’d been until Steve opened the door, and he could suddenly breathe easier. “Seems like I don’t live downstairs anymore,” Javier said. “I don’t… really know.” 

“Yeah.” Steve blinked at him, hesitated. His hair was damp, cheeks pink like he’d just finished shaving, and he smelled like shampoo; over his shoulder, Javier could see the same apartment he remembered. He couldn’t get into his own apartment, but this felt just as familiar, something Javier could lean into. “Yeah, uh. You moved.” Steve plucked his keys from the rack beside the door, stumbled his way into a loosely tied pair of sneakers and stepped forward, closing the door behind him. All Javier could do was watch, hands in his pockets, unable to form the words  _ Can I come inside _ . “I’ll drive you over.” 

“Thanks.” Had he been expecting Steve to ask him to stay, instead? Dread pooled in Javier’s stomach, at the thought of seeing his own, unfamiliar apartment. He didn’t want to live somewhere he didn’t recognize, he wanted to go home, and Steve – Steve always felt like home. 

But Steve was ushering him towards the stairs and not back into the familiar apartment and Javier couldn’t ask him not to, not - not after the way Steve looked at him in the hospital room, like Javier had forgotten something monumentally important, like Javier had done something wrong and didn’t deserve to have forgotten the weight of it on his shoulders. 

Steve was silent, as they got into his car - the same car, and it was strange, to suddenly be so thankful for familiar things, to one moment fully expect things to be the way they were yesterday and then to realize that nothing was the same, nothing, and he suddenly needed to cling to everything he recognized. It was a dizzying gratitude, an unfamiliar desperation. Steve wearing a familiar blue shirt, his same Jeep with the scratch on the passenger side door, the smell of his shampoo. And Steve, though he was suddenly an unfamiliar thing, quiet and avoiding Javier’s eyes and fidgeting too much as he drove. His fingers tapped restlessly along the steering wheel, and he didn’t seem to notice that the radio was playing commercials when normally, he’d have already changed the station three times at leaset. 

“So… why did I move?” Javier asked, and Steve cut only the briefest glance his way. He’d cut himself shaving, a little nick on his jaw. 

“How should I know? I guess you got tired of it,” Steve said, which didn’t make much sense to Javier. He didn’t get tired of places. He wanted to stay as long as he could, so they could feel like home, and he wasn’t nearly there yet, with his apartment. Why would he have ever wanted to start that process over? 

“Doesn’t sound like me,” Javier mumbled. The area of town Steve had driven to was closer to work, but it wasn’t like his old place hadn’t been pretty close, too. Had it been because of Steve? Had it become so awkward to see him that Javier had moved? 

The building Steve parked in front of wasn’t much different than the old one, though the apartment was on the third floor now, and not the first. Steve had to check the numbers on the doors before choosing the one on the right. 

“When did I move?” Javier asked, as he took his keys back out; this time, the key fit in the lock. His heart sank at the feeling like maybe, if it hadn’t fit, he could have gone back home. 

“Six weeks ago.” Which seemed like a pretty specific time frame, coming from someone who wasn’t even sure which door it was. Javier hated every clue he couldn’t understand. 

Steve followed him inside, though he lingered in the doorway as Javier looked at the unfamiliar entryway. It was about the same size as his old place, though the windows were bigger. Different furniture. Why would he have wanted to replace the furniture? He’d liked his couch. 

“You good?” Steve asked. Javier turned back to him, Steve still looking around like he’d never been here before. God, what had happened to them? How did Javier live somewhere Steve had never been?

“Sure.” 

“You, uh. Taking time off work?” Steve asked, and Javier almost asked him what day it was, but Steve already looked so uneasy, he didn’t want to remind Steve of just how wrong things were. 

“I don’t think so. Shoulder’s not that bad.” As if that was the problem, but Steve seemed to accept it, nodding and taking a few steps backwards. 

“So… see you tomorrow, then.” 

And then, then Javier was alone, in a place that didn’t feel like home. He spent a while poking around, figuring out where he kept glasses and which door was the closet and which was the bathroom, finding that his refrigerator was no less empty than usual. A surprising number of things were unfamiliar – the bed, the dresser, the dishes. Why would he have done this to himself? 

When he couldn’t stand the sight of his unfamiliar surroundings any more, Javier took his painkillers with whiskey and went to bed; he couldn’t sleep, but at least he could turn off the lights, hide the room in darkness. It wasn’t his bedroom, and it felt like his first night in Columbia, maybe even his first night in Miami, when he’d finally had a room of his own after leaving Texas and his uneasiness had told him that he’d expected it to feel like home, was upset that it didn’t. 

\--

Javier didn’t know where his desk was. He’d come to work early, walked off the elevator and found that it wasn’t quite the same, that the area that had housed their desks suddenly had other people in it, and Javier turned quickly, walked right back out, heart beating too quickly. 

So – okay. They’d reorganized the floor. Hired some new people. Wasn’t a big deal. Javier stood outside the front of the building, tried to ignore the way his hands shook when he lit a cigarette. He’d remember eventually, it didn’t matter, he would only feel like a stranger in his life for a little while. It would go away, it had to eventually go away. 

At the sight of Steve walking towards him, something in Javier’s chest settled, stopped its frantic fight to escape. Steve was here, was familiar and coming up to Javier like it was as natural as Javier remembered. 

“You lost?” Steve asked; he was wearing a navy shirt that made his eyes so deeply, deeply blue; had he stopped wearing the stupid striped shirts, during the time Javier had forgotten? He looked at Javier differently, for longer than he would have before; maybe it was just because he’d seen Javier get shot only four days ago and was seeing him how he’d been, bleeding, unconscious, maybe that was why Steve’s eyes were so serious. 

“Found my desk,” Javier said. “Wasn’t mine anymore.” 

“Oh, yeah. There’s a new task force, some other teams got cut.” Steve shrugged, “We’re a few doors down the hall, now.” 

“Huh.” Javier inhaled, exhaled smoke. Did everyone inside know he’d forgotten everything? Did everyone know more about him than he did, now? At least he still shared an office with Steve.

“Should you really be smoking? You were in the hospital yesterday.” Steve plucked the cigarette from Javier’s fingers, and Javier could only watch as Steve took a drag from it, like this was something they did all the time. “You are so fucking bad at taking care of yourself, Jav,” Steve muttered, voice strained by the smoke, and God, Javier could barely handle Steve calling him Javi, even that feeling monumentally intimate compared to just Pena, and – this? When had Steve started calling him this, the name a soft exhale, so familiar on Steve’s tongue. 

“They didn’t say not to.” He watched Steve’s hand as he held the cigarette to his lips again; Steve wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. 

“Yeah, probably didn’t think it was necessary.” Steve looked down at the cigarette between his fingers like he was surprised to find it there, then back at Javier. His face darkened. “I’m going inside. You coming?” 

Javier followed him into the building, and it was less unsettling, to see the unfamiliar floor from beside him. Even if Steve was prickly and different with him, even if he was still upset about whatever it was that Javier had done to him. His desk was still near Steve’s, at least; it wasn’t up against the wall anymore, but right across from his in the middle of the small room. As Steve started moving papers around on his desk, Javier sank into his own desk chair. He wasn’t sure what he’d been planning to accomplish by coming in to work. He didn’t know where things stood, didn’t know who was captured, who was dead, anything. His desk was strewn with paperwork, always the contrast to Steve’s tidied stacks and labels. Two empty coffee cups, an unbent paperclip, and a pack of staples but no stapler; it felt familiar only in that Javier’s desk always had this type of mess, but not this  _ specifically.  _ It was similar, but he hadn’t been here, didn’t remember crumpling up a receipt or running out of staples. 

Steve didn’t offer anything; he sat at his desk and started typing, flipping through files purposefully. Javier watched Steve’s hands move across the keyboard for a while, then opened the folders on his own desk and scanned the reports. There were names he didn’t know throughout every document, references to raids he hadn’t heard of. His own handwriting mocked him. He  _ knew  _ these things, had known them. Maybe it had been too soon to come back to work, but what else was he supposed to do? Wait around at home? He’d woken up to an unfamiliar bedroom, hadn’t known where the coffee was kept, and tried three drawers before he’d found his own socks. He didn’t want to go back there until absolutely necessary. Work was supposed to feel like home, but Steve was bizzarely silent and everything felt unfamiliar. 

“I might need to get caught up before I can do much here,” Javier eventually said. Steve looked up, hands stilling on the keyboard. “On the last… however long.” 

“Two years,” Steve said, “Maybe a little more.” 

Two years. Javier didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but – but not that much. How much could have happened in two years? It felt like an endless amount of time, and he knew it was just two years, just  _ two _ , but the void it had left felt staggering, impossible to cross. And Steve could pinpoint it. It felt too specific, felt too meaningful, how did he know so precisely? 

“So… Escobar?” Javier prompted. Steve sighed, reached for his coffee cup and found it empty, set it back down. 

“Struck a deal. Building his own jail.” Steve had that look on his face again, the clenched-teeth, dark-eyes look. “Nearly finished.” 

“How do you know it’s been two years?” He shouldn’t have asked, probably, but - how? How did he know it wasn’t just one year, or six months? 

“You thought I was married to Connie,” Steve said, voice tight. “And that hasn’t been true in two years, so. That’s how.” 

“You got divorced two entire years ago?” It had sounded so  _ recent _ , from his argument with Carrillo in hallway outside Javier’s hospital room.  _ You know you aren’t able to deal with him without blaming him for the divorce _ , Carrillo had spat, and could Steve really be that angry with Javier, two full years later? That angry, and yet still sitting right across from him, still working alongside him? 

“Yeah.” Steve stood abruptly, and Javier watched him go from the window that overlooked the hallway to the filing cabinets, and then back, lighting a new cigarette although he hadn’t finished the first, the one he’d taken from Javier’s fingers. It still sat in the ashtray on his desk, stubbed out but nearly untouched. 

“It was my fault?” Javier didn’t know how, couldn’t, but he must have done something. Put Steve in a dangerous situation, maybe. Told Connie something he shouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have slept with her; that was a level of self-hatred Javier didn’t possess, sleeping with the person Steve  _ did  _ want. How could Javier have ever hurt him? 

“What?” Steve turned back to him. He looked so much bigger, when standing; Javier always had a hard time looking away, couldn’t ever stop looking at the broadness of his shoulders, how much taller he was. 

“I heard Carrillo. He said you blame me for the divorce.” Javier swallowed, tried to keep going. “I don’t know what happened.” 

“What the fuck,” Steve mumbled under his breath, turning away again. “Goddamn it, Jav.” There it was again, panging right to the centre of Javier, that name he’d never called Javier before, except he must have, all the time. Two years was so much time. 

“Look, I don’t know what I did, okay? I don’t - I don’t know what the fuck to do with you, if I don’t even know what I did. Can you tell me?” Javier was holding onto the arm of his desk chair so tightly, his knuckles hurt, and he forced himself to let go. “Clue me in here, Murphy.” 

Steve flinched, turned to face Javier; his eyes were an ocean, a depthelss place to hide. “It wasn’t the fucking divorce from Connie,” he snapped, “It was you.” 

“It -” Javier blinked at him, couldn’t put it together. It had just - been his fault? The divorce was, what, some kind of collateral damage in whatever else he’d done? Steve looked like he was about to hit something, ran a hand through his hair and looked at Javier with a look that was helpless, furious. “Murphy,” Javier tried, but that seemed to just make everything worse. 

“And it wasn’t two years ago!” Steve went on, voice rising, but the look on his face was still there, miserable and  _ hurting.  _ “It was only six fucking weeks ago and it was my divorce from  _ you.”  _

Somehow, somehow, Javier’s first reaction was panic, because - because Steve knew Javier was in love with him? And from there, it was an avalanche, was Steve knowing, was Steve  _ wanting him,  _ was Javier having everything he’d ever wanted and losing it. Javier  _ had Steve.  _ How could Javier ever have lost him? Two years was such a long time to lose.

“What?” His throat had closed up, and it was suddenly so hard to talk. “You - you married me?” Steve was straight, Javier hadn’t  _ forgotten  _ that, so - he just hadn’t found out yet, that Steve wasn’t? How did he ever find that out? 

“Yeah, Javier, I fucking married you.” Steve’s jaw was tight, and he couldn’t look at Javier, and  _ this,  _ this was why. Because six weeks ago, Javier had lost him, and now, Javier had lost an incalculable amount of other things, too. All he’d ever wanted to do was kiss Steve, and to find out that he’d done it, done so much more, that Steve had once looked at Javier like - like Steve  _ wanted  _ him, and - 

“Did you love me?” It was a stupid thing to say, but he was losing everything, discovering what he’d had just to find out that it was gone, and he was suddenly falling apart. God, he was going to fucking cry in front of Steve. For all he knew, that had happened before, he didn’t fucking  _ know,  _ they - they had a whole secret history he didn’t know. Steve had loved him back. 

“Do you not  _ believe  _ me, or something? Fuck, Javi, just -” Steve yanked his wallet out of his back pocket, fumbled for something and slapped it down on the desk, slid it towards Javier. 

It was a photo of them. Worn on the edges, with a bent corner. It was  _ them,  _ it was Javier beaming at the camera with Steve’s arm around his shoulders. Steve, leaned in close, kissing Javier’s temple. It was everything Javier had ever  _ wanted,  _ he’d been there, that was  _ him,  _ and he couldn’t remember it, and suddenly, there was a sob welling up in his chest and the photo was being blurred by tears. 

He had  _ married Steve.  _ During the two years he’d lost, Javier had married Steve and  _ lost  _ him. Steve, who was storming out of the office, footsteps echoing down the hall, leaving Javier behind. Javier dropped his head into his hands, tried to steady his shaky breathing, couldn’t, couldn’t. Javier loved him, didn’t even have the memory of being married to him and what if it never came back? What if he never knew what he’d lost? What if he was stuck like this, in love with Steve and forever marooned from him, knowing that Steve had once loved him back and Javier had  _ ruined  _ it. 

It wasn’t like he could leave the office, walk past all those people he didn’t know, falling apart - but Steve would come back, eventually, inevitably, and how was Javier supposed to look at him, knowing what they’d been? Steve had a thousand memories Javier didn’t. Steve  _ remembered  _ kissing him, wherever they’d been in that picture, whatever day that had been. How could Javier not remember? 

People kept walking by the office; Javier rubbed his face, tried to stop his breaths from hitching. He was fine, he was fine, Steve wasn’t even here anymore. At least an hour passed; Javier poked through his files, but his gaze kept sliding back to the photo on Steve’s desk. Javier was living in a day two years ago, when Steve had no idea about Javier’s feelings for him, when Steve was just his straight, married coworker, and somehow, there was proof that in another life, Steve was in love with him, had  _ been  _ with him. Steve knew everything _ ,  _ and - and was so angry at him. What had Javier  _ done?  _

Approaching footsteps made him jerk towards the door, and just the sight of Steve down the hallway- Steve, who had married Javier, who Javier had  _ hurt  _ so badly Steve had left him - he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, his heart was suddenly racing at the sight of Steve and he thought he might shake apart. Steve was going to come in here and  _ look  _ at him and Javier was bent over his desk with his head in his hands, falling apart. 

“Listen,” Steve’s voice was flat, hard, but then he said, “Javi?” and it was so much softer, panicky. “You okay?” 

“Fine,” Javier choked out, but his heart kept racing and he struggled to get enough air. Steve was here and  _ hated him  _ and had married him and - 

“Hey.” Steve was suddenly right beside him, leaned over Javier with a hand on his back, and Javier didn’t know what to  _ do  _ around him anymore. “You don’t seem that okay.” 

“I’m  _ fine.”  _

“Goddamnit, Jav,” Steve sighed, but it was so soft, Javier thought he might break all the way down. This was too much, way too fucking much, Javier didn’t even know himself anymore, didn’t know what anyone knew about him, what he’d done. He was just  _ himself,  _ quietly in love with Steve and keeping his distance, but now he was being told that actually, actually he was Steve’s ex-husband. It was to be exposed all at once, to know  _ nothing  _ about himself, to grieve something he hadn’t known was ever his. 

“I’m fine.” Javier lifted his head, tried to breathe evenly, in, out. Steve’s hand was still on his back. Steve used to touch him? 

“You’re going home,” Steve said, his voice firm. “I’m taking you home. I’ll get you a fucking - catch-up file, or whatever. You can get caught up at home.” 

“It’s not even my apartment,” Javier mumbled, though Steve had already stepped away, was grabbing his keys off his desk. Javier watched him take the photo off the desk, too, slide it back into his pocket while looking determinedly away. “I moved out of my place to live with you, didn’t I?” Javier asked, and Steve dropped his keys. 

“Yeah.” He bent to pick them back up, tilted his head towards the door. “Come on.” 

Javier followed him in silence, until they’d gone all the way to the parking lot and he was opening the same car door again, getting back into Steve’s familiar Jeep. There were so many things he didn’t know - how long had they been married? What did it feel like to kiss him? Was there a picture in his own wallet? As Steve put the car in reverse and set about extracting it from the narrow parking space, Javier slid his own wallet from his pocket, thumbed through its contents. No picture. 

“I’ll get you a file to catch you up,” Steve said, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. How was it, that Javier could remember the exact way Steve had smiled at him, when they’d been sitting in the car in front of a brothel, how he’d shaken his head and given Javier a look that was nearly affectionate. He could remember that, with perfect clarity, but not their entire marriage. “You, uh. Have any follow-up appointments with the doctor?” 

“In a week, to take out stitches.” Was he looking at Steve too much? Every instinct felt upended, suddenly. 

“That, uh. Hurt, much? Your shoulder?” Steve asked. It did, but the pain had fallen to the backburner, amidst everything else. Somehow, getting shot was at the bottom of his list of concerns. Javier didn’t even know who had shot him, couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“No.” 

“You taking painkillers with booze?” Steve glanced his way, arched an eyebrow. “You’re not supposed to do that.” 

“I’m not,” Javier muttered, looking out the window. Steve gave a disbelieving huff that almost sounded amused. Javier bit his lip, didn’t let himself look at Steve. 

“Now why don’t I believe that?” There was a hint of a smile in his voice and God, that was somehow even worse, Steve sounding almost like Javier remembered - how he’d sounded just last week, as far as Javier remembered, though he knew it wasn’t. But - maybe softer. A hint of familiarity that hadn’t been there before. God, he’d been Javier’s  _ husband?  _ How could that fact be becoming simultaneously less and more believable? Javier had woken up to a world where he’d once had everything he wanted and lost it, and the more he tried to picture it the less real it felt, a dream that slipped away as he tried to concentrate on it but at the same time, there was the way Steve had snapped at him like Javier had really, truly hurt him, the picture in Steve’s wallet, and this, this fondness tucked into a tone that had once just been amused and light. Javier actually hoped that the dizzy headache he felt was because of his head injury and not proof that he wasn’t handling this well.

Steve drove him back to his new, unfamiliar home, and Javier lingered in its entryway when he opened the door, seeing its sterility in a new light. There had been a place in between his old apartment and this one, and it must have felt so different. A real home,  _ with  _ someone, and Javier couldn’t remember a goddamn thing. 

“I’ll put together a file to catch you up,” Steve said; he must have slipped past Javier, was returning from the kitchen. “There’s nothing in there but whiskey.” 

“When am I supposed to come back in?” 

“When you feel - up to it. Try getting some real food.” 

“Up to it?” Javier scowled, and Steve was doing that thing he did, hands on his hips and head tilted, kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Really? Just wait until I can remember what happened a week ago, and then I can come back?” 

“It’s not like it’s up to me,” Steve always had a way of making something innocuous sound like an argument, defensive even though he was just stating a fact, that it really was just Javier’s decision. “And I’m, uh.” He blew out a breath, looked at Javier and then away again. “Sorry. For telling you like that. It’s still pretty, uh. Recent.” 

His eyes were dark, an entire ocean, and Javier didn’t think he’d ever seen Steve like this, offering even a hint that he’d been affected by something. Steve was loud demands and stubbornness and insisting he was always fine. From the way he was biting his lip, the uneasy look on his face, Javier would guess that this was new to him, too.  _ It’s still pretty recent,  _ meaning Steve wasn’t over it, over him. 

“You still carry a picture in your wallet?” Javier asked. It was just so… soft. He didn’t think he knew a side of Steve like that, but he must have, once. It didn’t surprise him, when Steve responded by walking past him, opening the front door again. 

“Take your painkillers with water,” Steve said, “I’ll know if you didn’t.” 

After Steve left, Javier spent a while rummaging through his drawers and cabinets, looking for his own evidence of their marriage. If Steve had a photo in his wallet, surely Javier had his own pictures, at the very least? He just wanted something from  _ himself,  _ he could see how Steve was reacting to the divorce, but his own feelings were a missing space. 

The dresser drawers turned up nothing, and the nightstand was just a packed cardboard box that contained only office supplies. His kitchen still had packed boxes in the corner, with pots and pans and utensils. Only the necessities had been unpacked, even after six weeks. He recognized the coffee table; maybe they’d gotten rid of Steve’s shitty one, when moving in together and combining furniture. Connie had spent a lot of time furnishing their apartment, but, as Javier had always made fun of her for, had never quite settled on a coffee table. Javier was sure that was why he still had it - it had been brought to Steve’s apartment -  _ their  _ apartment. What had it been like, to live with him? Javier always hated to go home at the end of the day, would watch Steve continue up the stairs and ache to stay with him, and he’d… gotten to. 

Javier sank down onto the couch; for an eventless half-day, it had been somehow exhausting. His shoulder had started to burn with a dull pain partway through his search. He’d never liked strong painkillers and had taken over-the-counter ibuprofen instead, though he’d ignored Steve’s insistence on water, then kept looking. He just wanted to find something from  _ himself,  _ to show what it had been like, to be with Steve. There was nothing. If not for the picture in Steve’s wallet and the hurt in his voice, there would have been no evidence left at all. 

He fell asleep instead of continuing to hunt through his apartment, but when he woke up on the unfamiliar couch, there was a hint of what it would have been like, to be married to Steve. He’d apparently stopped by while Javier had slept, and had left groceries in his fridge and on the counter. The grocery choices of a man who didn’t cook - vegetables that didn’t go together, enough rice to last four months but barely enough beans for two meals, avocados that were rock hard, extensive sandwich ingredients. On the table, he’d left the key that must have been Javier’s spare, a folder stuffed with papers, and three water bottles. This was what it had been like, to have Steve as a husband: determinedly well-meaning gestures that were maybe a bit muddled, pointed reminders to take care of himself. The quietness of it, slipping in while Javier was asleep and doing more than Javier would have ever expected - was that new, a product of their divorce? Had he done things for Javier with sweet enthusiasm, or with a quiet sort of matter-of-factness? Javier didn’t know what kind of husband Steve was, not really. 

He knew what kind of ex-husband Steve was, though. The kind who snarled when asked to think about the divorce. The kind who drove Javier home, who shared his cigarettes like an absent-minded habit that hadn’t yet been forgotten, who didn’t have the first clue about cooking and groceries but what he did pick had been all Javier’s preferred brands and flavors. The kind who kept a picture of them in his wallet, six weeks after divorcing. 


	3. Chapter 3

Seeing Javier after the divorce had been hard. The beginning had been the easiest part; they were still angry, the first few weeks. Steve was too angry to miss him, and there was even a desperate, wrung-out sense of relief, to be done with the argument, to stop constantly wondering whether he’d done the right thing because it didn’t _matter_ anymore, it was all over anyways.

Things were supposed to get easier. Steve had always told himself that, throughout his life: things would get easier, everything eventually got easier, no matter what it was. But this – not this. Two weeks went by, and Steve’s anger had faded. He’d started waking up at night and panicking because Javier wasn’t beside him. Started finding it difficult to get out of his car before work, sitting for a long time in the parking lot, a weight on his chest he couldn’t shake. Staying later and later at work because Javier was there, and he wouldn’t ever be going back home with Steve again, didn’t even live in his building anymore. The relief evaporated and so did the wondering; he didn’t have to ask himself if he’d done the right thing, because he’d lost Javier and that made it really fucking obvious.

And Javier - his anger had lost its sharp edges but hardened into a resigned distance. He wasn’t glaring at Steve anymore, but it was because he was no longer looking at Steve at all. He was more professional than he’d been even when they’d first met. Steve felt the chill from across every room. 

At six weeks, it had become nearly unbearable. Javier was an impossible distance away from him. Missing him was a physical ache in Steve’s chest and sometimes, being near Javier threatened to bring him to his knees. Six weeks with endlessly more to go, because he would never be back, would never be Steve’s again.

It was different than losing Connie, Steve had begun to realize, and not just because this time, he was seeing his ex every day and not living a country apart. Losing Connie had hurt, but it had felt like he’d been losing her for a long time, by then. She’d faded all the way out and his life had filled in the space where she’d stood and kept going. Javier – Steve couldn’t keep going, was falling apart. Couldn’t sleep, lost interest in eating, failed to pay attention to anything at work, didn’t understand how he was supposed to live with himself. And it _hurt,_ it hit him when he wasn’t expecting it and suddenly, it was hard to breathe around the pain of missing him.

During the raid, when Javier had been shot – he hadn’t even been near Steve. Didn’t want Steve watching his back anymore, and he probably wouldn’t have wanted Steve in his hospital room, but Steve hadn’t been able to stay away. 

_Something is wrong,_ Steve had insisted to Carrillo, because Javier was unconscious and he’d just been shot in the shoulder, the force of it had thrown him to the ground but he should have been able to get up again – 

_He wouldn’t want you there,_ Carrillo had said, but he hadn’t stopped Steve from going with Javier. Maybe he’d just agreed to get Steve out of the way, didn’t want him to fuck up the already-down-spiraling raid because he was hysterical over Javier. And Steve – he’d known Carrillo was right. He’d been bracing himself for the moment Javier kicked him out as soon as the doctors deemed Javier’s condition stable and Steve could worry about something besides losing him. 

Steve had known immediately, that something was wrong. He’d walked back into the room and Javier had looked so relieved to see him, like Steve was going to keep him safe. Steve had known, then. 

Javier had only been back in the office for a day, back sitting right across from Steve in their small office, but entirely different than he’d been just last week. Last week, it had been nearly unbearable; Steve had kept thinking about how he used to bring Javier coffee in the morning, how Javier would say “this tastes terrible” after drinking it, but give him the most delighted smile. Steve had known since they’d met that he had a dry sense of humor, but only a year ago had discovered that when Javier was truly at ease, when he felt like they were playing something together and not self-conscious about whether he was actually funny, Javier let himself laugh at his own jokes. His eyes would light up and the delivery was completely ruined, but Steve smiled every time. Last week, Steve had remembered that out of nowhere and it had _hurt._ He couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

Javier had only been back at work for a day, and already Steve was losing it. He’d lasted one morning before _yelling_ at Javier, fled the room because he’d known Javier was going to cry. Javier didn’t seem to realize that Steve knew the tiny, subtle signs of that, and that had only served to make Steve feel more guilty. It suddenly felt wrong, that he knew so much about Javier. He didn’t know what to _do,_ how to possibly handle this; it was a particular kind of curse, to have his stony and hurt ex-husband replaced by Javier exactly the way he’d been when Steve first fell in love with him. 

The weekend passed quickly for the first time in recent memory, maybe just because he was dreading going back to the office, facing Javier again. Javier, who had forgotten to be guarded around him. Steve sat in the car for ten minutes in the parking lot, smoking and watching people walk towards the building. It was supposed to have gotten easier, being apart. This would surely pass eventually, Javier was bound to eventually get his memories back and go back to being distant, being hurt. Any day now, Steve would show up to work and Javier would be looking at him differently again. Today, even. _Please, God, not today,_ he thought, suddenly desperate, _not yet._

Fuck, Steve just wanted to go home. Wanted to get through the day without hurting Javier. Without having to escape their office so he could pull himself together, calm the fuck down so he didn’t have the breakdown he’d been staving off for six weeks. Maybe he should finally ask for the transfer he’d been considering, leave before Javier remembered everything and be gone when it all came back. As if Steve could bear to miss even a day of this brief reprieve, the last time Javier would ever look at him kindly. When Javier remembered, he’d have the context to understand how this strange interlude had uncovered how poorly Steve was handling losing him. It was going to be obvious, what a mess he was.

When Steve finally forced himself to get out of the car and walk towards the office, Javier was outside the building. Of course he was, and it was a battle between habits, to decide whether to approach him or not. Once, Steve would have without question and more recently, he’d have automatically kept a careful distance. Javier saw him coming, though, and even if his half smile was tentative, it still rendered Steve helpless. Javier, standing out front, maybe waiting for him, in tight jeans and a maroon shirt and sunglasses; Steve melted. 

“You could’ve taken a longer vacation,” Steve said in greeting, and Javier huffed out a laugh. This time, Steve was able to stop himself before he reached to snag Javier’s cigarette. A week ago, he never would have let himself, but suddenly, Javier was the way he’d been _before,_ and it was like something in Steve had reset. Suddenly, Steve’s ex-husband had been replaced by Javier as he’d been before Steve ever touched him. 

“Yeah, right. You think I forgot I’m a workaholic?” 

“Naah, that’s hardwired.” Except that nothing was, apparently. Not even his hurt, not even his anger. The fact that he remembered Steve at all was just luck; he could have easily forgotten Steve entirely, couldn’t he? He’d forgotten a bone-deep hurt, and while some part of Steve was distantly relieved, that he hadn’t hurt Javier on an unshakeable level, it was to realize that he hadn’t loved Javier in a way that had permanently changed him, either.

 _Did you love me,_ Javier had asked, again. He could forget everything, and still be left wondering the exact same thing.

Javier was looking at him, frowning in that way of his, eyes concerned; he had no idea, how thoroughly Steve could read him. Javier was worried about him, was wanting to ask _are you okay,_ and it was a look Steve hadn’t seen in six weeks. Post-divorce, Javier had either learned to hide it, or hadn’t ever wondered. It had probably been obvious that Steve wasn’t, anyways.

“Can’t stand out here all day,” Steve said, before Javier could ask. The way he’d drawn in a breath and held it for a moment had said he was about to ask. 

Inside, Steve was mercifully swept away by three long, back-to-back meetings, and though Javier was at his side for all of them, Steve had always been able to count on work to effectively drown his own thoughts. Even after the divorce, he could always talk to Javier about work; they were both so consumed by it, they could forget everything else, forget each other. At least, that was what it seemed like Javier had been able to do, see Steve as nothing more than an agent; it had been a gradual change, something Steve must have become desensitized to over time, because suddenly, Javier was jarringly different. 

“That was some bullshit, huh?” Javier said, as he followed Steve down the hallway, away from the conference room, “Predictive surveillance? Who comes up with this shit?” He didn’t _do_ this anymore, complain to Steve like they were on a secret, inner team, partners against everything else. 

“You did,” Steve said without thinking. Should he be _joking_ about all of this? It was automatic, to respond to Javier the way he used to, when Javier was like this. God, Steve missed being this way.

“I take it back. Sheer fucking genius,” Javier said, deadpan, and Steve grinned, looked over to catch Javier’s self-satisfied delight, and – oh. It wasn’t there. Steve felt his shoulders slump. “What?” Javier noticed, of course he noticed. Steve couldn’t just shut off entirely, but it hadn’t mattered, a week ago. Last week, Javier didn’t do things that made Steve forget they weren’t on good terms anymore. 

“You used to –” He sounded pathetic. What was he going to say - _you used to smile because you were so sure I’d be in on the joke._ Seemed like a dick move, anyways, to point out that Javier had stopped being self-conscious about kidding around, when he’d been suddenly made that way again. Steve always did have a talent for kicking Javier when he was down. “Never mind. This predictive surveillance shit is just what they came up with to try and see what Escobar was lining up for the prison. See which of his guys are being used the most. Really, they just don’t want to look like idiots when he surprises us for the hundredth time.” 

He brushed past people in the hallway, keeping an eye out for Carrillo as he went; Carrillo didn’t show up frequently, but Steve had learned to keep a wide berth. He had the distinct feeling that Javier hadn’t told Carrillo the specific details of the divorce, hated to think about why that may have been. Regardless, Carrillo had clearly seen enough to develop a dislike for Steve he never bothered to hide, and it was a headache and a reminder Steve never needed. Probably stupid, that he couldn’t walk down the hallways without keeping watch, but three weeks ago, he’d let his guard down and Carrillo had cornered him easily, snarled _give him a fucking break, Murphy._ Apparently, Carrillo had heard about how poorly things had gone, when Steve and Javier had argued about whether to go in after one of their informants, who’d been in the hotel for suspiciously long.

 _Just fucking wait,_ Javier had snapped, _what’s wrong with you?_ And Steve had snarled at him, Javier muttering _God, ever since –_

 _You wanted this,_ Steve had hissed, and that was why Carrillo had been after him lately, construing this as Steve blaming Javier for the divorce. Carrillo didn’t even know.

“You want to get dinner before or after?” Javier asked, following Steve into their office. “Or, uh. You’re probably busy.” 

_Anything,_ Steve wanted to say, but Javier was moving papers around on his desk, a blush rising on his face, and Steve knew that meant he was hoping desperately that Steve wouldn’t press, that any answer would embarrass him further. “I’ll pick you up at seven,” Steve said instead. “Was there anything in the meeting that the file didn’t cover?” 

“Nothing major.” Javier was still holding onto the file Steve had put together for him, had carried it between their meetings. It almost felt like Steve was helping him. 

“He’s had some guys rise through the ranks, lost some. We were close to getting the head sicario, would be nice to deprive him of that at least, while he’s in prison. Carrillo had a transmission about –”

“The tax,” Javier mumbled around a cigarette, checking his pockets for his lighter. “Can you believe he’s taxing them? Idiot.” He lifted his head, arched an eyebrow. “What?” 

“How do you know about the tax?” It hadn’t come up in the meetings, and Steve was pretty sure it wasn’t in the file; it cut off before the last raid, because he couldn’t stomach looking at any of the reports. Javier had been shot, and even the date made Steve feel sick. Did that mean Javier _remembered_ it?

“Oh, Vanessa told me.” He located a lighter on top of his desk, didn’t seem to notice Steve still watching him. _Vanessa?_ Steve’s heart twisted painfully, though he knew he had no right to be upset. Javier could do whatever the fuck he wanted. 

“When did you see her?” 

“This weekend,” Javier shrugged. “She just showed up. Guess we’d made plans.” So Javier had arranged this before, not in his new, forgotten-Steve state. How was that _worse?_ Steve clenched his jaw, swallowed hard and crossed the room to his own desk. They weren’t married. Javier could make plans with anyone he wanted and clearly had been, maybe throughout the entire six weeks. They weren’t married. Steve opened his desk drawer to find the stapler, shut it harder than strictly necessary. Javier could do whatever he wanted, including fucking other people. Women. Didn’t matter. 

“What?” Javier dropped into his chair, propped his elbows on the desk.

“Nothing,” Steve huffed. They weren’t married. It was fine, that Javier was seeing other people. Steve could do the same, if he wanted, if he could. He could go back to women, although Javier had always been attracted to them too, and Steve – but what the fuck was he supposed to do, see _other_ men? How was Javier already seeing other people, it had been six weeks but that was hardly any time at all. Less than two months. 

“Murphy,” Javier prodded, and _fuck_ if that didn’t hurt, jabbed right to Steve’s heart. He was just _Murphy_ again, because Javier didn’t remember even being close friends. 

“You sure got over me quickly,” Steve snarled under his breath. It was unfair, he knew, but Javier was calling him Murphy, and less than two months ago, there’d been a day when Steve had climbed into the shower after Javier and kissed him underneath the water until Javier moaned his name. It hadn’t been fucking _Murphy._

“Seriously?” Javier sat back in his chair, took a lungful of smoke and exhaled it again. “I can’t even remember being married to you. I don’t know how to grieve something I don’t remember having.” Jesus, what a description. Steve’s chest felt tight suddenly, at the thought of grieving their marriage. That was how it felt, like everything he’d lost amounted to a thousand small deaths. The way Javier had moaned his name that morning, so soon before the end of everything. His breath on Steve’s skin as he’d nuzzled into Steve’s neck, the heat that radiated from him as he pressed close to Steve. Every single thing Steve remembered was a new loss. 

_Forget it,_ Steve almost snapped, caught himself just in time. Javier had. He’d fucking forgot, and what if it hadn’t been like that for him, even if he had remembered? Maybe he didn’t even miss it, how he would lean his hip against the counter as he watched Steve comb back his hair, make fun of how long it took, tell him _you’ll be lucky if anyone finds that attractive,_ grinning through it, unable to keep a straight face.

“You can do whatever you want,” Steve muttered. “We’re not married.” Anymore. Not married _anymore._

There was a knock at the open door, but when it was two in rapid succession and a pause before the third knock, Steve didn’t look up. Carrillo. The last thing he needed, really.

“How’s it going?” Carrillo asked in Spanish, from the doorway.

“Alright,” Javier replied, also in Spanish, “He’s mad at me.”

Steve sighed, clenched his jaw. “I’m not _mad,”_ he spat, and Javier’s head jerked up in surprise. “God, Javi, it’s been two years. I know _some_ Spanish.” Two years, a year and a half of which he’d spent married to a man who spoke Spanish, who would come up behind him and croon to him in Spanish, _I love you_ and _I missed you_ and _come kiss me._ Steve stood abruptly, threw the file in his hand back onto the desk with a slap, Javier’s dark eyes following every move he made. Judging from the look on his face, Steve was back to being a volatile mystery to him.

“Jealous, then?” Carrillo contributed from the doorway, unflinching when Steve glared at him.

“You don’t fucking know.” Now that he had nothing, now that he’d _lost_ what he’d had – now it was easy, to admit to himself that he was jealous. Javier was with someone else, and Steve was burning up on the inside. Javier had wanted _him,_ once.

Steve stormed past Carrillo, took the stairs down to the first floor because the thought of waiting for the elevator made him feel like he might combust. It was only three o’clock, and he had a four-thirty meeting, so he couldn’t go far, just ended up hiding at the café around the corner, sitting at an outdoor table nursing a single beer and smoking.

If she’d just shown up at Javier’s door, Javier must have made plans with her pre-raid. Did that mean he’d moved on? Steve had known he’d eventually find someone, need someone; Javier was sweetly needy, happiest when things were stable. For all his sleeping around before, Steve knew it had never been a commitment problem, just that he’d been afraid to ask for more from anyone. He was always going to find someone else but Steve wasn’t ready to see it. Not now, not yet, but – eventually. More than anything, he didn’t want to have broken Javier. He’d come to Steve already a little broken and Steve just didn’t want to have made it worse.

The first time Javier told Steve he loved him – it had been a warning, a reluctant admission. _I love you,_ because they’d gone away together and Steve was getting swept away in it, and Javier had been glowingly happy but then had drawn back, told Steve _just so you know, I love you,_ like it might make Steve rethink what he was doing. Like Javier was on the cusp of having his heart broken if this wasn’t his to keep. 

The whole world had felt so far away; Steve was in a city he’d never heard of before with Javier, who was looking at him with such heartfelt intensity, his hair curling from the ocean-salty air, and Steve had never known such a warm, radiant happiness.

 _Then marry me,_ Steve had said.

How could he still be _denying_ it? Steve leaned onto his elbows on the table, fist against his cheek, exhaled a slow breath as he stared at the tabletop. He was so fucking tired. Tired of feeling twisted up and near-hysterical over it, of finding loopholes and explanations and excuses. He was already hurting, he couldn’t hold on to this, too, couldn’t hold both heartbreak and denial in his hands at the same time.

He’d married a man. Been left by a man. Sobbed over losing him more than once, because Steve _loved_ him. Steve had spent years telling himself he wasn’t _like that,_ with a desperation that grew into a riot of helplessness. He’d married a woman, he’d refused to acknowledge any of it, shoved it away until he met Javier, and everything came undone. And now – now, Steve was just too _hurt_ to keep it up. Too tired, too heartbroken, and too changed to try and tell himself that despite everything he’d done, he somehow wasn’t _like that._

Steve was. He was in love with Javier, he was gay, and nothing was going to change any of that.

“Should I go back to the office?” Javier asked, and Carrillo raised an eyebrow, looked at him across the table with a particularly knowing expression. It seemed like that was supposed to mean something specific to Javier; he was getting the sense that they’d become pretty close friends, and it was a distantly nice thought, that in the sort-of-future, sort-of-present he had a friend like that.

“Murphy,” Carrillo said; so it was his _Murphy_ face. Around them, the bar was already crowded, though it was only six fifteen. Their table was tucked into a corner, and Javier leaned back against the wall, tapping his cigarette into the ashtray as he kept forgetting he was holding it. He’d waited at the office for a while, but Steve had never come back. Had even missed the four-thirty meeting. Probably a good thing, since Carrillo hung around as well, seemingly more to antagonize Steve than to collect reports, or whatever his official reason had been. Still, though, Javier had been worried; it wasn’t like Steve, to skip meetings, even the less formal ones. He’d been _upset_ when he left, a kind of distressed Javier never used to see on him but suddenly kept causing.

“Yeah. He’s picking me up at seven, but. I guess at home? Or at work?”

“Home, probably.” Carrillo signaled to a waitress with his empty glass. Steve’s name seemed to bring out a need to drink, in him.

“He speaks Spanish now?” Javier asked, and Carrillo snorted.

“Kind of. Basic shit, I guess. About time.”

“I didn’t know.”

“How would you?” The waitress had returned, handed Carrillo a new glass, and he nodded his thanks to her. “Like he has any right to be jealous, anyways.”

“Do you… know why we got divorced?” Javier asked, tentative. He knew he shouldn’t be asking anyone but Steve, but – how could he ask Steve? Steve always looked like he was liable to either shoot someone or start sobbing, and Javier didn’t know which was worse. They were always just moments away from something hurting Steve at a bone-deep level. It wasn’t like him, not at all, what had Javier _done_ to him?

Carrillo sighed, sipped from his glass and altogether looked like Steve was a very familiar subject to him. “If I did, I’d tell you,” he said, voice grave. At least that was familiar, the way he said things like even the smallest promise was him swearing on his own life. “But you didn’t talk about it.”

“No?” So – it must have been his own fault, Javier realized, with a certain, heavy dread. If it was his fault, he’d have been too ashamed to talk about it.

“Nothing. One day, everything was normal, and the next, you moved out.”

Javier frowned, trying desperately to picture it. He couldn’t even picture being with Steve, let alone abruptly losing him. It only took one day? He titled his head back against the wall, and Carrillo slid his glass towards Javier. Javier sighed, picked it up and took a swallow.

“How’s he doing?” Javier asked. Carrillo gave a disgruntled sound. “Come on. How’s he been handling it?” He studied Carrillo’s face, but it wasn’t familiar enough to him to offer any clues. “Is he just… fine?” He half wanted to ask about himself, too, but it sounded too ridiculous even in his head, asking _how am I? Am I upset?_ Carrillo had already accused Steve of blaming Javier for the divorce, did that mean Steve was angry with him?

“Well,” Carrillo sighed out. “When Connie left him, no one knew it. You asked how she was doing, and he said she’d left three months ago. Even you didn’t have a clue.”

“So?” Javier could picture that easily, Steve just going about his life despite his wife leaving him. Despite the soft, fond way he’d treated Connie, he’d always acted like his marriage was just something he had, not like being a husband was an integral part of him. Was – was Steve like that again? With Javier? Just returned to his normal life, no longer anyone’s husband but no different for it? Javier’s heart was sinking.

“Hasn’t been like that with you.” Was that a good thing? Probably not, but Javier couldn’t help a twinge of relief. “He’s a disaster. Liability in the field. Loses his temper in meetings.” Carrillo paused. “Looks like he doesn’t sleep well.” Longer pause. “Insisted on going with you to the hospital. Had to let him, I thought he might compromise the raid if he stayed or get himself killed.”

“Huh.” Javier tapped the ash of his cigarette, brought it back to his lips. He’d never seen Steve like that, and because of _him?_ Steve, who showed no outward emotion to others besides anger? And this sounded angry, sure, but it also sounded… hurt. There was still a picture of them in Steve’s wallet. Javier’s stomach twisted with guilt. “He missed a meeting today.”

“Color me surprised,” Carrillo muttered.

Javier lingered until six forty five and then walked home; apparently, his new building was also part of the embassy housing, though one of their older buildings. He hadn’t yet recognized any of the other occupants, though in two years, he supposed they would have had some reorganization in the department. He was so tired of things having changed around him.

He half expected Steve not to show up, after his no-show at the meeting earlier, although Javier still had a hard time accepting Carrillo’s insistence that it was because Steve was jealous. He just couldn’t reconcile the Steve he knew with _this_ version, still couldn’t actually picture Steve _with him._ Steve was his straight, married partner. He had _just been_ that way, in Javier’s memory. It was like a long dream, a surreal world that was almost like home, and he didn’t even know if he wanted to wake up, if it was better to be quietly in love with a Steve who would never want him, or to be this, the lost husband Steve no longer had and would no longer touch.

Steve showed up. He knocked on Javier’s door, asked if he was ready to go, and said little else as Javier followed him back to the car. It had grown dark outside and they drove past the more well-lit areas of the city and towards the darker roads; even in the dim light, Javier could see the way Steve bit the inside of his cheek, how he looked exhausted though it was only seven in the evening, a resigned sort of quietness that made Javier want to touch him somehow. He didn’t know what it would do, but apparently, in his past life, that would have been something Steve would have allowed. May have liked.

They parked far up the hill in a clearing they had to access from the back, overlooking a section of the neighborhood with spaced-out buildings and little foot traffic. Nearly rural, and Javier had done enough of these to know the outcome already: watching busier commercial areas went quicker, but was more hit or miss, and watching places like this, small and residential and removed, would take more time but would usually turn up at least something. He settled in to wait.

The first half hour passed in silence. Steve fidgeted the way he always did, much too tall to be cramped in a car for long, bothered by the steering wheel bumping his knees when he tried to shift around, the reason Javier usually took the driver’s seat and let Steve have the passenger side.

“Hey,” Javier ventured, “Trade spots with me.”

“It’s fine.”

“Really? Because you still look six-two to me. Get out of the car.” To his surprise, Steve obeyed, opened the car door and slid out. He stayed outside while Javier took the driver’s seat, stretched his arms over his head and then lingered, pacing a little. Javier was beginning to wonder if he planned to stay out there all night, when tiny beads of rain started hitting the windshield, and Steve opened the door again.

He at least seemed marginally more comfortable in the passenger seat, stretched his legs out in front of him, slumped down in the seat. Still didn’t say anything, just watched out the windshield in silence.

“Will you,” Javier started, had to pause and try again, suddenly short of breath. “Will you tell me why we broke up?”

Steve gave a little huff of breath. “Divorced,” he corrected, voice brittle.

“Divorced.”

“Really, Jav?” Steve turned his head away, looking out the window. “You’ll remember it eventually.”

“What if I don’t?” What if – what if he never remembered any of it? What if this was with him for life, a void where he’d been with the man he loved and then lost him? Javier would have been with Steve but have no knowledge of what it was like to fall asleep beside him, no memory of Steve’s hands on him.

“Then you’re lucky.” Steve sat up, but it was only to grab the pack of cigarettes off the dashboard and shake one into his palm. He cracked the window, slid back down again. “Come on, Javi,” he said, quieter. “Don’t make me talk about it.”

“Why not?” It was a stupid question, he knew. Of course Steve wouldn’t want to talk about it, if he’d really been handling it the way Carrillo had said. Maybe Javier just wanted to see it for himself, as heartless as that was. Steve tipped his head so he could look at Javier, his eyes a deeper blue in the dark, hair falling over his forehead.

“It’s only been six weeks, Javi,” he said, sounded as tired as though he’d spent all six weeks sleeping only fitfully. The rain had started coming down harder, and the cool, clean scent of it could almost lull Javier into thinking everything was okay. Nothing was okay; there was misery on Steve’s face, and it was Javier’s fault. 

“What about the good parts?” Javier asked; he saw the way Steve’s jaw moved when he clenched his teeth. “There were good parts, weren’t there?” He meant to say it lightly, but he’d never been very good at humor. Probably why he wasn’t very funny in general; no one could ever tell he was joking, leaving him feeling alienated.

“Yeah.” Steve was looking out the window again. He’d seemingly forgotten to light the cigarette, was still holding it between his fingers, unlit.

“How did it… start?” The hardest part to figure out, really. Javier was stuck in the before, already in love with Steve but afraid to ever touch him, how did it ever start? Steve tried to take a drag on the unlit cigarette, frowned when he found it didn’t work, but still didn’t seem to notice the lighter on the dashboard. 

“I was drunk.” He shifted around, wrapped an arm around himself, hand tight on his elbow. “And I kissed you.”

“Why?” Javier blurted out, and Steve curled in on himself more, that seemingly impossible way of his where he could make such a big frame look small. “You’ve gotten drunk before and never kissed me.” Why couldn’t it have happened just a little earlier? What if he never got to remember any of it?

“I don’t know.” Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, still determinedly looking away from Javier, but Javier _needed_ to know. What had changed? Had he just – looked better than normal? Done something suggestive? _What?_ “Everyone was speaking Spanish,” Steve eventually mumbled, “And you’d keep looking at me, so I wouldn’t feel left out. You had your arm around me.”

It was so… soft. Nothing like what Javier had been expecting. He didn’t know what to say, it was all so much worse than he’d thought.

“And you’d look at me,” Steve went on, “Like you were waiting to see what I did next. It took a while, before you’d ask for anything from me,” he added, and Javier realized he wasn’t talking about the same night anymore, was drifting further. “You thought it didn’t mean the same to me, and when you told me you loved me, it was because – because you thought I should know. So I could stop, if I wanted.” He took a breath that was abruptly jagged, and didn’t keep going.

“Sorry,” Javier murmured, unsure if he was apologizing for asking now, or for what had happened before. “I shouldn’t make you think about it.” This drew a dry laugh from Steve.

“I’m always thinking about it.”

“I just couldn’t figure it out. I thought I’d be like this forever, I guess.”

“Like what?”

“Just… in love with you. Doing nothing about it.” Despite everything, it was strange, almost impossible, to say aloud. Last week, the last week of his own mind, he _never_ could have said this to Steve. And now it was common knowledge. Javier was in love with Steve.

“You are?” Steve asked, voice tight. Javier shrugged a shoulder helplessly. “Well.” Steve finally leaned forward, snatched the lighter off the dashboard. “That’ll change.” He opened the car door, “I need a break.”

The rain had lightened to sprinkling, though Javier didn’t think a downpour would have stopped Steve, anyways. Steve shut the door behind him, leaned back against the car and didn’t even try to watch the house at the bottom of the hill. Didn’t notice when the guys they’d been waiting for showed up and then left. Javier had to lean across the seat, knock on the window.

“Hey, let’s get out of here,” he called, “Got what we needed.”

Steve slid back into the passenger seat; his hair was wet, jacket studded with beads of rain. He dug the keys out of his pocket, handed them over wordlessly. Javier took a breath, debated asking if Steve was okay. He kept rubbing his eyes, jaw tight. Did Steve still have feelings for him? Javier was tempted to assume that no, Steve wouldn’t, couldn’t, but he knew that was coming from his two-years-out-of-date assumptions. It had been easy, to look at straight, married Steve and know that he’d never feel that way about Javier, but technically, that hadn’t been correct either. And now, Steve like this – Steve, as Javier’s ex-husband, who had clearly been hit hard by their divorce and was sleepless, stressed – Javier didn’t know what to think, anymore. Steve was a thousand miles away from him, two years away, on the other side of something Javier had never experienced.

“You’re gonna have to tell me how to get back,” Javier said, since the turns they’d taken were harder to spot in the dark and he’d never been out this way. Steve sat up a little, rubbed a hand over his face.

“Left out of here. Then you’ll go about three miles.”

Javier did as directed, glanced back over at Steve again. “You planning on missing any more meetings tomorrow?” he asked, as close as he could get to asking if Steve was okay. Steve snorted.

“Kind of feel like blowing off the rest of the week,” he said, but there was a twinge to it that he couldn’t seem to hide. He slumped back down, head turned away from Javier, one knee bent towards himself and arms crossed.

“I’m glad you were with me at the hospital,” Javier offered, after a long silence. He hadn’t been able to shake it, the thought of Steve insisting, worrying about him, Carrillo allowing it only because Steve was such a wreck over it. Horrible as it was, maybe that was what Javier really needed evidence of, what would make him believe it had all happened, why it felt the most real in the moments when Steve was falling apart. Javier hadn’t been able to believe it until Steve was yelling at him, proving it not with the photo in his wallet but the way his voice broke over the words.

“I knew you would throw me out when you woke up, but. Couldn’t let you go alone,” Steve mumbled, not turning, and it almost sounded like standard work-partner obligation, until he added, soft and pained, “You hate being alone.”

Maybe it felt like a dream to him, too; maybe, from the moment he’d walked into the hospital room, Steve had been feeling just as displaced, living in a world that had changed around him and left him the same as he’d been the day before, suddenly out of place in his own life. A different dream than Javier’s, because Javier was untouched, placed in a world on fire around him while he stood in the middle, unaware. In Steve’s dream – the world was fine, and he was the thing that was burning down.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with lots and lots of help and ideas from tr33xs and ghostlysweetnight, because they understand my desire to hurt steve's feelings, a lot.

The week continued as it had begun: bewildering, a lostness he couldn’t emerge from.

Javier went to his appointment to remove the stitches in his shoulder, had to listen to the doctor tell him that he was healing well and doing just fine, somehow fine even though something much more _important_ was still wrong. It should have been impossible, that any part of him could be fine, when he still couldn’t remember two years of his life. It was disorienting, to feel fine, to be told he was fine, when there was so much _missing_.

After the late-afternoon appointment, Javier went back to work, stayed so far into the evening that Steve kept looking across the desk at him, maybe waiting for him to leave first, looking increasingly more tired.

“Go home, Murphy,” Javier said over his shoulder, as he rifled through a file cabinet. While they hadn’t attempted an organization overhaul in the last two years, they had crammed a staggering amount of new files into the same old folders, and everything was suddenly even harder to find. When he found the file he wanted, he turned back to his desk, discovered why he hadn’t received a response from Steve. Javier checked his watch. Eight-forty-five, which was apparently later than Steve could currently handle, because he’d put his head down on his folded arms, asleep on his desk.

“For God’s sake,” Javier mumbled. “Go home, Murphy,” he said, louder, but maybe not quite loud enough to wake Steve. Javier didn’t want to go home, and didn’t really want Steve to leave him alone at work, either. The thought of either option made him just – just _anxious,_ for no reason at all. Why couldn’t _that_ have been something he’d forgotten? He’d always done this, and it just seemed to have become worse, now that every part of his life housed a new minefield. Couldn’t even go home. Couldn’t even walk over and shake Steve’s shoulder to get him to wake up. Couldn’t hear Steve tell him they’d been married without full-on panicking. Of all the stupid things to set it off, having his stitches removed was a particularly ridiculous one. Just because he was proclaimed fine – so what? What did it really matter, if he was physically fine? Why was it making him panicky and nervous, to think of the rest of him healing so much slower?

Javier waited another hour, kept sneaking looks across the desk. Kept thinking of Steve at his hospital bedside, holding his hand and staying awake until exhaustion dragged him down.

Ultimately, Javier didn’t have to figure out what to do. One of the military guys walked by the office, barked “Asleep on the job, Murphy?” through the open door, and Steve jolted awake.

“Asshole,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes before he checked his watch. “Javi, it’s almost ten. Why are you still here?”

“You’re still here,” Javier pointed out. Steve yawned, stood and stretched. Javier kept his gaze firmly on the desktop.

“It’s only Tuesday, it’s way too early to burn out. Come on,” Steve was clearly going to wait until Javier left with him, so Javier had no choice.

He followed Steve out of the deserted building, down to the parking lot, nearly all of the spaces empty. Between the dark and the cold, all Javier wanted to do was go home, but – but not to his new apartment. It wasn’t home at all, in the same way that he wasn’t fine – his key fit in the lock and he lived there, but everything felt _wrong._

“Javi,” Steve said, and when Javier looked over, he realized they’d stopped, and Steve was watching him, hands in his pockets, frowning slightly. 

“What?” Javier hunched his shoulders against the cool wind that swept through the parking lot. He was fine, it was a stupid thing to be worried about, and normally, he’d just push this shit away, force himself to move past it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Steve was still watching him, and somehow, Javier thought that maybe – maybe he _knew._ He knew, could see that Javier was caught up in a knot of anxious uncertainty, and Javier was afraid to find out what that meant. Even going back to his apartment was better than facing yet another instance where Javier would lose his footing on the ever-changing ground, another thing that Steve knew about him that he hadn’t before, that Javier wasn’t _ready_ for him to know.

Javier went home to the apartment that didn’t feel like home, lay awake in a bed that didn’t feel familiar, thought about nothing but the _you’re fine now_ diagnosis that didn’t feel like it could possibly belong to him.

The week continued, inescapably disorienting.

On Thursday, they found out that Carrillo captured and killed Gustavo Escobar, which in and of itself would have been shocking enough to Javier. The last thing he’d known, they were nowhere near needing that kind of force and intimidation, and suddenly, Gustavo was dead, his body left on the road for Pablo to find, and Carrillo was matter-of-fact about it, unmoved, mostly just angry he hadn’t gotten what he’d really wanted from Gustavo: Pablo.

“He’s disappointed,” Javier tried to explain to Steve, again. They were stuck in late-afternoon traffic, driving back from their debrief with Search Bloc, the news still fresh. “Nothing else, just disappointed. Have things gotten that bad?”

“Shit’s always bad,” Steve said flatly.

“But you’d think he’d at least be glad to have Gustavo out of the picture. Finally hit Escobar somewhere it hurts.”

“Nothing hurts that guy.” He braked almost too late, when traffic abruptly slowed again. Javier fidgeted, tapping his lighter against his thigh; the entire day had felt the same, wound tight. Carrillo’s cold, sharp debrief, Steve’s alternating between silence and harshly short responses, a brutal death that hadn’t served its intended purpose.

“This would.” Javier, for all his hatred of Escobar, was sure of that. Everyone around Escobar was _hired,_ Gustavo was one of the few people who had been there all along, there out of real loyalty. No matter what Escobar had become, that was a loss that would hurt.

“Probably thinks it’s just the price he has to pay.”

“Still. Carrillo barely cares,” Javier argued, though he felt like he’d lost the plot. It was something about Carrillo’s disappointment with what should have been at least a small victory, it was disheartening. He’d killed the second-most important man in the operation and it hadn’t meant anything – were things that despairing, that dismal? Two years ago, this would have been a victory. Javier almost dreaded remembering, to return to the time everyone else lived in, where this had been dragged out for so long that they were desensitized, near-defeated.

“I have no idea, Javi. You know him better than I do.” He sounded more irritated than Javier thought the conversation could be making him, but he’d been like that all day. Javier had assumed it was the exposure to Carrillo, but even though they’d left Carrillo’s office over half an hour ago, it was still ongoing.

The taxi ahead of them slammed on its brakes, and Steve must not have noticed, because the next thing Javier knew, the Jeep had hit the taxi’s bumper, traffic was stopped again, and Steve was getting out of the car as the taxi driver yelled and pointed. Javier sighed, checked his watch.

He wasn’t paying attention to the scene outside, until abruptly, the voices were much louder, and Steve was drawing his gun right in the middle of the road and Javier’s heart was suddenly racing out of control. He lunged for the door, scrambled around the car and reached Steve before he could do anything stupid – and this was stupid, _so stupid,_ what the fuck was Steve thinking? He was snarling, furious, and the taxi driver had his hands up, was still yelling.

“This your gringo?” he shouted at Javier, pointing. “Think you could control him?!”

“Hey,” Javier grabbed for Steve’s arm, “What the fuck, Murphy?”

“Listen, asshole –” Steve was still focused on the taxi driver, fury in his blue eyes, and Javier held onto his wrist, wrenched it down so Steve at least wasn’t pointing a gun at the poor man, who hadn’t even _really_ been at fault.

“Steve!” Javier hauled Steve back with an arm across his chest, and Steve allowed it, at least. “Get in the fucking car, Steve. I don’t have enough to deal with already, you have to pull a fucking gun in the street? Get in the car!”

What the fuck was _wrong_ with Steve? Was this what Carrillo had been talking about? The volatility, unpredictability, was this because of Javier, somehow? Steve let Javier shove him towards the car, and he got back into the driver’s seat, slammed the door hard. Javier couldn’t catch his breath, heart still hammering; this was bad, this was almost so _bad._

He turned back to the taxi driver, could do little more than offer a shrug and money to fix the bumper, which the man took with a snarl about gringos who couldn’t even speak Spanish before stalking back to his car. Javier took a moment to try and steady his breathing, then rejoined Steve in the Jeep. Steve said nothing, one hand tight on the wheel as he waited for the taxi to drive forward.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Javier finally asked, when he thought he could get through the words without his voice shaking.

“Sorry.”

“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry, what’s _with_ you?” Javier demanded. Steve shrugged a shoulder, the casualness of which Javier found almost hysterically laughable. Steve had reacted to a minor fender-bender by threatening to shoot an innocent man in the street, and he was _shrugging._ “You were –” _Fine yesterday,_ he’d been going to say, although that was a bit of a stretch when Steve didn’t really seem _fine_ anymore _,_ just varying levels of broken.

“It just got… out of hand,” Steve said, choosing his words with almost ridiculous care when they were so clearly incorrect. Javier wanted to shake him. Out of hand? Where was the Steve who got irritated when Javier skipped fields on paperwork, who had actually handed over his passport to anyone in the airport who asked to copy it, who stopped at red lights even at deserted intersections?

“You do this shit all the time, now? Just lose it on people?” Javier snapped, “You’re going to get someone killed, Murphy!” That earned him a small flinch, which was what he’d been going for, though it still made him feel guilty. God, Steve really wasn’t okay, Carrillo had been right. How could Steve just – just be going around like this? Refusing to admit he _wasn’t okay?_

When Steve parked back at the office, Javier followed him to the front of the car, stood beside him, though Javier was barely registering the dented bumper.

“Wasn’t even that bad,” Steve muttered, as though the damage to the car was even remotely the concerning part of this. Javier snarled, reached to snatch the file of paperwork out of Steve’s hands, suddenly so _angry_ with Steve, angry and scared for him and _worried._ Steve had seemed fine, except he wasn’t, he just hadn’t cracked yet. Javier had _hurt_ Steve and he was wrecked, ruined, violently falling apart.

“The car isn’t the _point,_ you fucking blond fool,” Javier hissed, and when he looked at Steve, the pissed-off indifference had suddenly vanished, replaced by a startlingly wounded look.

“You always say that,” Steve muttered, and then he was gone, cutting across the parking lot and leaving Javier standing in front of the Jeep, looking at the dented bumper alone. He wondered, for the first time, if Steve missed him. Javier was _here,_ but – not really. Not the way Steve had known him, and God, it was _lonely,_ to feel like he himself was missing, like Javier wasn’t the person Steve needed. To be missing now, when Steve really needed him

After the way the week had begun, Javier was hoping Friday could pass by uneventfully. Steve was sulky and quiet, looked so _tired,_ and Javier kept being tempted to ask if he was okay. He knew he had no Steve-related instincts, that whatever he’d learned during their marriage had been lost, but it seemed like there was something else. By five o’clock Friday, Steve looked like he was going to fall asleep at his desk again, pouring over the seemingly endless transcripts of intercepted calls.

“What’re you looking for?” Javier asked, when he’d been watching Steve stare at a file for twenty minutes.

“Nothing.” Steve pushed the file away, ran a hand through his hair. “Building his own prison. Every time I hear it, I can’t believe it.”

“Hardly surprising.”

“Just making his own fucking rules, as usual,” Steve muttered, “Even when surrendering, he’s getting what he wants.” He fiddled with a pen, stuck the end of it in his mouth, eyes still dark.

“You planning on going home tonight?” Javier asked. Steve shrugged. He’d pulled another file towards himself to read, paused to reach for his coffee cup. “Okay.” He didn’t know how to do what Steve had done earlier in the week, how he’d managed to make Javier leave his desk; Javier was powerless in comparison. He collected his jacket and keys, but left them in a pile on his desk; he made a stop at the break room for a cup of coffee, then returned to their office and set it down at Steve’s elbow.

“Don’t stay up all night,” Javier tried. Steve kept chewing his pen, barely noticing him. Javier _wanted_ to drag him from the room, force him to go home and sleep; if he fell asleep at his desk again, there was no one around to nudge him into going home.

“Uh-huh.”

Javier lingered, slowly gathered his things off the desk, watching the way Steve rubbed his eyes. Did Javier _ever_ know how to help him? Steve just seemed too far away for him to reach.

“There something… wrong?” Javier stopped in the doorway, leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. Steve didn’t lift his head.

“No.”

“Would you tell me if there was?”

“Javi,” Steve muttered, “Go home. You’re not my husband anymore, you don’t have to do this.”

Javier had _never_ been his husband. In some dream world he hadn’t participated in, yes, but Javier _didn’t remember._ All he could do was mumble a goodbye and leave.

By the time Javier picked up dinner and got home, it was still only six o’clock. There were still hours and hours left of the evening, and he was expected to spend it alone. Alone, because his partner couldn’t stand him anymore, because he never did have anyone and the one time he did, he’d fucked up and couldn’t even remember. _You’re not my husband anymore,_ Steve had said, but Javier _hadn’t_ been and for once, he just wanted Steve to look at him the way he did before, when Javier was the right version of himself, before anything had happened. It was a particular kind of hell, knowing Steve had _wanted_ him but being a version of himself Steve would never touch.

And what the fuck was Javier supposed to do about it, anyways? Just – just wait around for his memories to come back, feeling unwanted and lonely? He did what he always did, what he’d apparently been doing after the divorce anyways, as he’d learned when Vanessa showed up at his door expecting him to remember their appointment. Because that was the easiest way not to feel lonely, and there were always people who gave him shit about having to pay for it, but it was _safer._ Javier didn’t have to convince someone to stay. Didn’t have to get someone to _want_ him. He was achingly lonely and couldn’t face an entire night alone and in a small way, this made it better.

He had a few people he always came back to. Vanessa, because she was beautiful, soft in a way that made every evening together feel comforting. Gabriela, because she crooned in his ear the entire time, telling him things he could almost believe, how he was making her feel, how perfect, how _good._ And, after asking around and working up the nerve to call, Matias, and his was the number Javier called, even though he knew it would only hurt him more afterward. He’d always been attracted to both men and women, but being with a man was what he _wanted,_ and the temporary feeling of being with a man paid to be there – it was more fulfilling in the moment, more painful afterwards.

Javier was in the mood to suffer, it seemed, and within twenty minutes, Matias was at his door. Handsome and tall and always so at ease, just like Javier remembered him.

“Good to see you again,” Matias said when Javier let him in, flashed a smile his way. Matias didn’t ask why, and Javier realized with a jolt that Matias must not have heard from him in – how long? Had Javier seen him after the divorce? Would he have wanted to sleep with a man when he’d just been left by Steve? God, fuck, Javier had _had sex with Steve._ “Hey,” Matias stepped closer, cupped Javier’s face in one hand. “Forget about it all for a while, hmm?”

“Fuck, that’d be nice,” Javier mumbled, tried to stop thinking about it, although how hadn’t he realized it before? They’d been married, surely that meant – meant Steve had fucked him, and it seemed utterly wrong, that Javier was getting hard at the thought of it, when he was trying so deliberately to forget about Steve.

Matias must have known where Javier had been for the past two years, because he very specifically didn’t ask. He didn’t ask why Javier had called him only now, didn’t know how much Javier had forgotten, didn’t question it, and that was always something Javier had liked about him. He had an easy smoothness about him, taking everything in stride, following Javier’s lead in how far to go. Later, Javier would mourn the absence of a person in his life to touch him the way Matias did, but while he was still there, Javier almost had everything he wanted.

Matias started unbuttoning Javier’s shirt for him, had him backed against the wall and kissed him slowly, deeply. Javier was almost to the point of whimpering for it. Matias undid the first button, then the second, paused to run his hands along Javier’s sides, rest on his hips. His hands were big, and all Javier could think about was Steve touching him, with those big hands, how he’d said that he’d gotten drunk and kissed Javier, and what had it been _like?_ Had he pinned Javier against a wall like this, had he been unsure, had he been desperate –

Someone knocked on the door. Matias drew back with a forgiving smile, giving Javier the opportunity to slide out from under him. Javier sighed, tipped his head back against the wall.

“Javi?” Steve’s voice. Goddamn, of course it was Steve. Javier bit his lip, wondered if his erection was obvious and maybe he shouldn’t even answer the door because for fuck’s sake, he’d been thinking about Steve. Steve knocked again.

“Fuck,” Javier mumbled, gave in and crossed the entryway to open the door. “What?” he asked, but Steve was already coming inside.

“Did you get updated on the Cali cartel? Because I –” Steve stopped when he spotted Matias, who had gone to sit at the kitchen table, patiently waiting. Javier couldn’t read his face well enough to know if he recognized Steve as Javier’s ex-husband. “Who the fuck are you?” Steve asked, sharp like maybe he already knew the answer, hands on his hips. He had such a particular way of doing that, somehow carrying his anger in the set of his shoulders, the tension in his forearms.

“It’s after work on a Friday, Murphy, what could be so important?” Javier asked, and he saw the way Steve’s jaw clenched.

“Excuse me for fucking bothering you. And – fuck, you know what? It’s classified, can you just get the fuck out of here?” Steve barked at Matias, who gave him a placid look in return. Javier didn’t exactly want to kick Matias out, especially since he’d already paid and was going to be just as lonely after Steve left, but the mood was ruined, anyways. Or, more accurately, now that Steve himself had shown up, Javier wasn’t going to be able to think about anyone _but_ Steve, and getting fucked by someone else while thinking so vividly about Steve was the worst idea he’d ever had.

“Matias,” Javier sighed out, and Matias moved to leave; he ignored Steve, but paused to wink at Javier before slipping back out the front door. Javier turned back to Steve, who stood with his hands still on his hips, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking tired and angry and expectant.

“Who the fuck was that?” Steve asked, and Javier arched an eyebrow.

“You said it yourself. We’re not married.” It was cruel, he knew, but between Steve’s abrasive snarling and what he’d interrupted, Javier was out of patience. What was he supposed to _do,_ just be alone until he remembered his divorce, and then he could be alone _and_ miserable?

“Goddamnit, Jav, don’t give me that shit. You don’t know what we lost.” Steve stepped closer to him, and it felt just like Javier had thought it would, Steve so much taller and broader than him and _fuck,_ what had it been like? “You want to fuck some other guy, I won’t stop you. But don’t act like you understand what it means, that we’re not married anymore. You were _mine,_ Javi.” His voice was a deep growl, and Javier knew Steve was all-but yelling at him, but his dick clearly didn’t know the difference. He took a step backwards, bumping up against the entryway wall.

“You want me to grieve for it? Show me what it was like,” Javier said, though the words made something in him twist up in nervous anticipation, like this was akin to admitting he wanted Steve, as though Steve didn’t already know that. But Javier didn’t remember ever telling him. Didn’t remember ever touching him.

Steve gave a strangled little sound, but then he was leaning down and kissing Javier hard. A whimper escaped Javier, as Steve licked into his mouth and crowded in closer to him, his hands flattened to the wall like he didn’t know if he could touch Javier.

He could though, he _could,_ Javier needed to know what it felt like. He didn’t want to scare Steve away, push him too far, because what if Steve stopped? What if he realized what he was doing and changed his mind, although at the moment it seemed safe, because he was kissing Javier like he was dying for it. He kept his hands off but his knee settled in between Javier’s legs, hips meeting his, and Javier arched into the contact. 

“Please,” Javier panted, before Steve could say anything, before he could change his mind. It was enough; Steve’s hands moved to Javier’s hips, and Javier melted at the firm hold, fisted his hands in Steve’s shirt so he wouldn’t step back. Steve didn’t leave, but he didn’t make a move to do anything else, either, just kissed Javier until Javier’s dick strained the front of his tight jeans and he thought he couldn’t take not being touched anymore. He wanted to look down and see if Steve was hard, too, but didn’t dare pause long enough.

Steve stopped. He pulled back, hands still tight on Javier’s hips, gave him a look so miserably out of place. “You wouldn’t want me to,” he said, swallowed. Couldn’t seem to make himself let go of Javier, and for all his hesitation, he couldn’t seem to chase the familiar possessiveness from his hands, how firmly he held Javier’s hips. Like his body already knew Javier was his.

“I know myself,” Javier insisted, and if Steve thought he would pass up this chance, if there was anything in the world that could have happened to make him _not want Steve_ anymore – “I know what I want.”

“Jav,” Steve whispered, but when Javier pulled him close again, he leaned into it, gave a desperate little sound and kissed Javier again. Javier eased out from under him, grabbed Steve’s wrist and led him towards the bedroom, where Steve only paused to stumble out of his shoes before letting Javier drag him onto the bed. Javier unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way and tossed it aside, but hesitated and left his jeans on – what did Steve want, what would overwhelm him, what would he let Javier _do?_

For all his uncertainty, there was an effortlessness to it that Javier hadn’t been expecting. Steve already knew that Javier didn’t want the light turned on, that he wanted Steve to kiss him again so they could pick up where they’d left off in the entryway, that he wanted to be eased back into it after the transition to the bedroom. Steve climbed over him, propped himself up on his elbow, one knee between Javier’s legs, and how was Javier always forgetting how big he was? How impossibly broad, how tall, somehow he forgot until Steve was on top of him.

Steve cupped Javier’s face with one hand, his thumb stroking along Javier’s cheekbone, and Javier hadn’t been expecting the softness of it, that Steve would spend so long just wanting to kiss him. He’d wanted Steve for _so long,_ always pictured it in the only way that felt realistic – fast, dirty, hard. Never like this, never soft and nearly reverent.

“Shoulder okay?” Steve asked, and Javier blinked at him, momentarily disoriented. Steve dipped his head, pressed a kiss to Javier’s bare shoulder; the rub of his stubble against Javier’s skin made him shiver. “Doesn’t hurt?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah.” Javier barely registered the soreness, Steve nuzzling into his neck, kissing along his jaw. When Steve shifted onto his elbow and slid his free hand downward, Javier’s breath caught, held, as Steve ran his hand across Javier’s stomach, until his fingertips brushed the bulge in Javier’s jeans. The too-light strokes made Javier press his hips upward involuntarily.

 _“Please,”_ he gasped, and Steve took it as permission to rub more deliberately, giving just enough friction for Javier to arch into. Steve shifted, pulled back to kneel over him, though he glanced up at Javier’s face before making any moves, hands hovering over Javier’s belt. How was this a sight Javier had ever been familiar with – Steve’s eyes dark with desire, his hair falling over his forehead, his breathing shallow and soft. Javier lifted his hips obligingly, and then Steve’s confidence was renewed, as he tugged Javier’s jeans down just far enough.

“Oh, fuck,” Steve mumbled appreciatively under his breath, and Javier couldn’t stop _looking_ at him, drinking in the way Steve bit his lip, the broadness of his shoulders, his spread knees. His cock pressed against the front of his pants, and Javier wanted to touch him so, so badly. Before he could so much as ask to, though, Steve had freed Javier’s dick from the last layer of fabric and wrapped a hand around him. Javier hissed, arched up into Steve’s hand.

It was almost too much, Javier thought he could have come with just a few good strokes, but Steve was going maddeningly slowly. Each time Javier got close, Steve somehow seemed to know and would back off, climb back up Javier’s body to kiss him again, knew how to throw his weight around so that he had Javier pinned to the bed, unable to thrust up against him.

“Steve,” Javier begged, and he whimpered aloud when Steve shifted against him, felt Steve’s hard dick against his hip. Fuck, Steve _wanted him,_ it was the most dizzying part.

“Shh, I got you,” Steve’s voice was a low rumble, and whatever Javier had been expecting, it wasn’t that Steve would move to the end of the bed, lean over and take Javier into his mouth. Javier gasped, would have jerked his hips up if Steve wasn’t already holding him down, swallowing messily around the head of his dick and pressing his tongue along the underside. It was hot and sloppy and so _good,_ Javier trembled for it and clenched the sheets tight in his hands as the wet heat of Steve’s mouth enveloped him.

Steve knew exactly what he wanted, pulled off when Javier was close and finally started jerking him off with firm, unrelenting steadiness, slick and tight and fast.

“That’s it,” Steve murmured, “C’mon, Jav, fuck, fuck –” His other hand had strayed to his own dick, absently rubbing along the hard length of it like he couldn’t help himself. That was all it took, watching Steve touch himself, and immediately, Javier was coming in Steve’s hand with a groan.

Javier tried to catch his breath, and even in the dim light, he could see the small wet spot on Steve’s pants, Steve’s hand hovering over himself like he wasn’t sure if he should keep going even though he was so hard, it looked unbearable.

“Take your pants off,” Javier demanded, and Steve hesitated only a moment before obeying, stripping them off and letting Javier pull him down again. Javier half wished he had turned on the light, wanted to see everything, but he satisfied himself with a thorough exploration, running his hand over the shape of Steve’s dick in his boxers, feeling the way he twitched when Javier thumbed over the slick head. Steve was mumbling curses under his breath, face turned against the pillow as Javier finally got his hand around Steve’s dick. He wanted to memorize every sound Steve made, how his hips twitched and the way he kept groaning Javier’s name. He wanted to ask what Steve wanted, but was afraid to break the spell of it all, Steve delirious with need, thrusting into Javier’s hand and shaking. Javier wanted _everything,_ wanted to suck Steve off, wanted Steve to fuck him, wanted to know what it would be like –

“Did you fuck me?” Javier blurted out, because he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Steve’s cock was thick in his hand and he _had to know._ It would have felt so good, and now, now he could almost picture it, imagine how it would have felt, knowing the sounds Steve would make. Steve’s dick twitched at his words.

“Yeah,” he whispered. Javier slid his hand slowly along the length of him, Steve shuddering as he did, eyes squeezed shut.

“What was it like?” It was unfair to ask, he knew that, he _knew,_ but it felt equally unfair not to know. Steve had put his arm over his face, hips jumping upward as Javier kept up his slow pace, Steve trying desperately to thrust into his hand for more friction.

“So fuckin’ good, Jav,” Steve groaned out, babbling as Javier circled his thumb over the head of his cock, relentless. “Oh, fuck, it was so good, I loved it – fuck, _fuck –_ it was so good–” Javier slowed his pace, nudged up Steve’s shirt so he could run his hand along the skin just above the waistband of his boxers, over the trail of blond hair. Steve trembled beneath his touch, giving broken, pleading sounds, face hidden behind his forearm.

“Yeah?” He couldn’t tear his gaze from the sight of Steve on his back, breathing hard and hiding his face, thrusting into Javier’s grip, falling-apart desperate. Had – had Javier ever fucked him? He’d much more often thought about getting fucked by Steve, but seeing Steve like this – God, he suddenly wanted to. Wanted to thrust into him slowly, watch the way Steve fell apart for it, wanting him.

“Did I ever fuck you?” Javier asked before he could help himself.

Steve whimpered, shook his head no. Had Javier ever asked to? What was their relationship _like,_ was Javier able to ask for things like that? Already, he couldn’t believe he was asking now, could only do it because he already knew Steve wanted him, had proof that he wasn’t really putting his heart on the line, Steve had already wanted him, already married him, Javier could venture a little farther than he’d normally dare.

“Did you want me to?” he asked, stroked his free hand along the inside of Steve’s thigh as he kept jerking him off. Steve gave a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a sob.

“Yeah,” he choked out, “Fuck, Jav. I do, fuck, I do – I wanted it, I loved you so fucking much, and I _wanted_ you to –” He moaned high in his throat, and suddenly, he was spilling over Javier’s hand, shaking. God, Javier was still thinking about what he’d said, re-hearing it, and he kept sliding his hand along Steve’s dick until Steve was nearly sobbing from the overstimulation and Javier finally released him. He leaned over the side of the bed to grab a towel out of the laundry basket, cleaned up while Steve pulled his boxers back up, breathing hard, head ducked.

 _I loved you so fucking much._ Javier couldn’t stop hearing it, the desperate longing of it, and he didn’t know what to do now. Steve moved to sit on the side of the bed, leaned over with his elbows on his knees, heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. He took shaky breaths, curled in on himself, and Javier wondered if he’d gone too far.

“Steve,” Javier whispered, and Steve gave a sound that Javier would swear to be a sob.

“I’m sorry.” Steve shook his head, ran his hands through his hair but didn’t look up. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I just _miss_ you.”

“Don’t be sorry.” For a moment, Steve had felt like _his._ Falling apart for him, wanting him, and he was so far away again, silhouetted at the side of the bed, his back to Javier. Suffering the loss of something Javier had only experienced once. _I do,_ he’d said, like it wasn’t entirely in the past, like part of him still wanted Javier. “Can’t I fix it?” Javier asked, fidgeting with the corner of the sheet.

“Fix what?”

“Whatever I did.” It was terrifying all over again, to admit he was in love with Steve, but Steve already knew, they’d already done this, it was safe, and still, Javier’s heart was racing. “What made you leave me.” Couldn’t he, though? Wasn’t there anything he could do, anything he could relearn, he couldn’t just stand still and watch this keep happening. Maybe if he had Steve back, if he could fix everything before he remembered, before he remembered how to be someone who hurt Steve –

Steve looked back at him, and for a moment, Javier was sure that he never could fix this – Steve’s eyes were too sad, he looked too heartbroken.

“It wasn’t your fault, baby,” Steve said, voice distant, so quiet, and he dropped his head into his hands, took a shuddering breath. The _baby_ rung in Javier’s ears. “You left because I made you feel like I didn’t want you.”

He stood, and Javier was motionless, suddenly set adrift, nothing under his feet. If it wasn’t his fault – if he hadn’t done anything – there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t fix it. How had Javier ever _left him?_ Was it possible that he didn’t know himself the way he thought he did? Loving Steve felt hardwired into him, something he hadn’t forgotten even when he forgot seemingly everything else.

Steve picked up his discarded pants, redressed and found his shoes. Javier could only watch in silence, trying desperately to piece together a world where the man who sobbed _I loved you so fucking much_ like it was ripped from his chest could have ever made Javier feel unwanted. Steve had loved him, Javier could feel its aftermath like a gravitational pull, could see the effect of it in Steve, in how easily he fell apart, how guiltily, how helplessly. Steve was so _open._ All the most vulnerable parts of him were on display – all Javier had to do was ask, and Steve was telling him everything, between the confessions that spilled from him and the softness he couldn’t hide. He wasn’t even _trying_ to hide any of it.

Maybe he wasn’t always like that.

Javier watched Steve leave, and even though Steve said nothing, he looked _wrecked,_ and how was Javier managing to stay away from him? How had Javier ever been able to leave him? _I made you feel like I didn’t want you –_ that was how. The one thing Steve could ever do to Javier that could really hurt him: Steve hadn’t wanted him. If Javier had believed that, he’d have been able to stay away, would have been too ashamed to try again, to be so helplessly in love with someone who didn’t want him back.

 _Like I didn’t want you,_ and the way he’d kissed Javier, like he was always drowning and kissing Javier was to finally breathe again – Steve had wanted him. Javier was sure of it, that even when it had seemed like Steve didn’t, he’d _wanted_ Javier. Maybe it was only clear now, in the broken wreck that he’d become afterwards, something Javier could only see by the void it had left, but losing him had destroyed Steve.

 _I miss you,_ Steve had said, and it was an apology, a confession. A way home.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve went to work early on Monday. He wasn’t avoiding Javier, technically; Javier would eventually show up and sit right across from him, after all. Steve just couldn’t handle walking up to him outside the building, as had become their new habit. Javier always waited for him, like it was their new shared habit, and though Steve hadn’t seen him since Friday night, he still wasn’t ready.

From the moment he’d kissed Javier, he’d known it was a bad idea. All it was going to do was hurt, because Javier was going to remain lost to him and all it would do was remind Steve of what he’d lost. But he’d thought – he’d thought that his life was already falling apart, anyways. It had been falling apart for years, so what did it matter, if one more thing hurt him? He’d already lost Javier. He could stand a little more heartbreak if it meant kissing Javier one last time.

He just – melted, when Javier touched him. Completely lost his mind. He’d never been this bad before, but losing Javier had broken down something inside him that used to hold everything in and suddenly, all Javier had to do was touch him and Steve was near tears, confessing that he loved Javier. And that wasn’t even the worst of it, he could have lived with that, because Javier _knew_ that. Steve may have been doing his best to shut it away, but the evidence was all on the table: they’d been together, of course Steve had loved him. It was everything else, what Javier had wrung from him easily, because Steve had missed him so fucking badly, had been forced to look at himself and what he wanted, and when Javier said _did you want me to,_ an honest curiosity in his eyes, hand wrapped around Steve’s dick and Steve already shaking and coming undone, Steve had told the truth.

At eight twenty-five, Javier showed up at the office door, and he looked surprised to find Steve already at his desk.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” he said, and Steve shrugged guiltily. He shouldn’t have left Javier waiting outside for him, but – but he couldn’t even meet Javier’s eyes. How was he supposed to walk up to him?

“Woke up early. Figured I’d get some work done.” His desk was empty, and he reached to grab one of the stacked folders from the corner so he’d at least look busy. Javier gave a disbelieving hum. When Steve snuck a glance up a few minutes later, Javier was slouched in his desk chair, frowning down at the hinge on his sunglasses. Looking at Javier’s hands made heat rise up the back of Steve’s neck. He opened his desk drawer, fished through it, and then leaned across his own desk to set down a tiny screwdriver at the top of Javier’s.

Javier said nothing as he took it, set about tightening the tiny screw, and Steve kept staring at Javier’s hands. God, he’d missed Javier touching him. Missed every fucking thing – the way he always grabbed onto Steve to keep him close, how he liked to be kissed and then moved to the bedroom and kissed again, the way he drank in Steve’s touch, always shy right up until Steve gave him what he wanted, and then he couldn’t get enough, was loud and needy and perfect. Steve had known he shouldn’t do it, that Javier didn’t know their context, that he wouldn’t have done it if he’d remembered, but – but Steve was so tired of the clawing ache in his chest and how empty it felt to miss him, and fuck, he’d just wanted to be happy one more time.

The morning passed slowly. Steve was so consumed by nervous energy that when the phone rang, he actually jumped. It wasn’t even _his_ phone.

“Peña,” Javier answered, shooting Steve a questioning look across the desk. He spoke in Spanish that was too complicated for Steve to understand, though he caught small pieces of phrases, _today_ and _really?_ and _of course._ When Javier hung up, he stood, grabbed his sunglasses off the desk. “Come on,” he said, “Field trip.”

Escaping the office was a relief, and they’d gotten all the way downstairs before Steve thought to ask where they were going, only questioned it when Javier strode expectantly over to the Jeep, waited for Steve to unlock it.

“Where’re we going?” Steve asked, unlocked the car and climbed in, couldn’t quite discern the nature of their trip from Javier’s mood. He was frowning too much for it to be something good.

“Carrillo said Escobar is surrendering this afternoon,” Javier said, “You want to see that son of a bitch in person?”

Steve wasn’t sure he knew what he wanted, anymore. Had lost the ability to tell what was good for him. Did he really want to see Escobar, surrendering and losing nothing, defeated in a way where he still won? He didn’t; they went anyways.

They’d never seen Escobar in person before, and there was something unsettling about only seeing him like this – from the side of a dirt road, watching him surrender, a figure in the distance. The whole reason Steve had come to Columbia. Right in front of him, a closing chapter, the entire reason he’d come down here, this place where his life had been torn apart and rearranged, where he’d found Javier.

“Looks different in person,” Javier said from beside Steve. Steve bit the inside of his cheek, didn’t know whether he agreed. Escobar looked… calm. That was the most striking part, because after all the killing and the upheaval, the deaths and the loss, after everything that had happened since the moment Steve showed up in Columbia and stood here a completely different man, Escobar was still. Three years of constant, violent movement, and there he stood, calm. A quiet end to a riot.

“Feels like I dreamed the whole thing,” Steve muttered. This was how it ended, then – no ending at all, nothing to show for it. He’d lost everything he’d come to Columbia with and everything he’d been, and then he’d lost everything he’d found here, too. Hadn’t held onto the safe stability of his marriage to Connie. Lost his husband, forfeited the self he could stand to live as. Nothing to hold onto, at the end of it all, and there Escobar was, in a surrender where he kept everything he’d gained.

Escobar was taken away in a helicopter, and long after the sound had faded upwards into the sky, they stood on the side of the road. Steve fidgeted with the leather strap of the holster across his chest, found himself trying to run his thumb along his no-longer-present wedding ring. It was over, it was _over,_ but nothing had happened, not really. Not enough.

He snuck a look at Javier beside him, but he looked like he was feeling lost, not hating where he’d found himself. God, how could he not remember the last two years? It had rearranged every part of Steve’s life. Put away the things he’d held onto, brought forward everything he’d buried, it had been an upset that his previous self hadn’t survived, but even if Javier had remembered – would he have felt changed by all of this? Or just returned to the way he’d been before they’d ever met? He wasn’t happier.

“Ready to go?” Javier asked, soft. Steve tried to take a deep breath, rubbed a hand over his face.

“Sure.” He passed the keys to Javier, and headed for the passenger side. If he tried to drive, he’d probably take nothing but wrong turns, and end up lost; or, worse, hit a car, lose his fucking mind, and scare the shit out of Javier. Fuck, Steve sometimes couldn’t keep a handle on himself, it was like sometimes, he felt everything all at once. Everything he’d lost, everything he couldn’t control, everything that scared the fuck out of him, and he was nothing in the face of it.

Javier drove for a while, and Steve only realized how much he’d tuned out when he stepped out of the car expecting to find them in the office parking lot, and they were somewhere else entirely. A street he didn’t recognize, busy with pedestrians and shops.

“Come on,” Javier shut his door, gave an expectant head tilt. “What? Were you really dying to go back to the office and talk about his ‘surrender’ some more?”

No, Steve wasn’t. He sighed, reached back into the car to grab his sunglasses out of the cup holder, and slid them back on. Javier was already leading the way to a restaurant, and Steve could only wordlessly follow, until they were seated at a small table outside and Javier had gone ahead and ordered for both of them. It could almost have felt like before. Sitting across the table from Javier, late-autumn sun warm on his shoulders, it was almost familiar. Javier was different, and it _hurt_ to look at him like this, the sudden juxtaposition.

“What?” Javier asked, arching an eyebrow, and Steve shook his head, reached for his beer to avoid answering. Javier had been so _happy,_ before, how had Steve never _realized_ that? He’d become so accustomed to it, the gradual easing into their new normal, and when it was cut off, everything was so different that the comparison never became apparent. But now, Javier back where he’d been before, a day that could have been a day from before – he’d been so happy as Steve’s husband. _Radiant_ with it. Carefree like Steve had never seen him, and his eyes would light up when he smiled, which was whenever he looked at Steve.

“So I’m friends with Carrillo now? He keeps calling me with info before anyone else,” Javier said, and Steve snorted. “Seems like you guys never hit it off.”

“Yeah, he went from ambivalent to hostile. I think he visits the office just to try and poison my coffee.”

“Seems too subtle for him.” Even when Javier smiled, it wasn’t the same, not exactly. God, he’d been so happy, before. “So how’s… everything else?” Javier asked, fidgeting with his hands in the same way he always did. “Catch me up.”

“There’s not much,” Steve was grateful to be interrupted by the arrival of the food, though he wasn’t sure he could stomach anything. There were empanadas, because apparently, Javier could forget their entire marriage, but still remember what Steve tended to order. “Connie’s back in Miami,” he offered. “We talk sometimes. She’s doing good.”

It was an odd way to summarize what it really was: Steve going radio silent for two years, then calling her the day he got divorce papers, only six weeks ago. He was probably more honest with her now than he’d been during their entire marriage, even though they couldn’t have talked more than a handful of times since he’d broken the two-year-long silence.

“We didn’t talk for a while,” Steve offered, studiously breaking an empanada in half. “But I called her when shit got bad. That kind of stuff.” It wasn’t exactly reciprocal, although when they were on the phone, Connie somehow managed to convince him not to feel guilty about that. She didn’t call _him,_ when she was having a bad day; she had friends for that, a mother she was close to, a sister. Somehow, she still made it feel normal, that Steve’s only support system came from his ex-wife.

“That’s good,” Javier said, and Steve shrugged a shoulder. _Good_ was a stretch; _raw_ felt more accurate, because it was while talking to Connie that he usually said things that he hadn’t said aloud before, and it tore him to shreds. She’d always told him he needed some kind of anger management and he’d never understood the concept, because how could he _manage_ things like that? Anger rode in on the back of everything that hurt him, and there was no managing a hurricane like that. There was nothing left of him to manage.

“It didn’t end badly, or anything, with her. I think she knew something was – missing.” His chest tightened; this was much too close to talking about it. She’d sensed it, because people could tell that, about Steve, maybe. Was it really considered a suspicion, when it was true? Just last night, he’d – he’d been – all Javier had to do was touch him, and Steve was spilling everything, was admitting that yes, yes, he wanted Javier to fuck him, he _wanted_ that. Steve felt heat rising up the back of his neck, face getting hot. God, he couldn’t think about this while looking at Javier, couldn’t handle feeling both aroused and guilty, hated that he could be getting hard at the thought while still burning with shame.

Javier seemed to know to drop it, thankfully. He asked about a few of their coworkers he hadn’t seen around the office – a retirement, a transfer, another transfer – and about who got their old office space. Steve almost relaxed, almost felt the tension bleed entirely out of his shoulders.

“It’s almost November,” Javier commented, busily splitting an empanada in half, doubtlessly looking for the ones filled with beef instead of vegetables, because he always took the best ones, “Your parents coming for Christmas again?”

Steve swallowed, started to try and fidget with the ring he wasn’t wearing. “No,” he said, “Haven’t heard from them since last week.”

“Busy?” Javier looked up, sunglasses sliding down his nose, clearly nonplussed. Steve shifted in his seat, looked away. No one at the tables around them was paying them any attention, everything moving on around them, perfectly normal. It _sounded_ normal, not hearing from his parents for a week, but – it wasn’t, this time. This was just the first week of an endless number. One day, it would be a staggering amount, but right now, it was just one.

“Not exactly.” When the waitress passed by, he stopped her, did his best to ask for the check in Spanish; she smiled at his efforts. “We should get back,” he told Javier, who nodded, but still looked thoughtful, confused.

 _You don’t understand,_ Steve couldn’t tell him, couldn’t stand to bare their entire shared history to him from this side of it. Not here, not now, but he knew – if Javier had him in bed again, kissed him again and looked at him like that again, Steve would be helpless to confess everything he held onto, like he wanted Javier back so desperately that he would offer anything to build the bridge back to him. No matter how painful, how secret; Javier had wanted him, and Steve had been desperate to go home to him again.

By the time Steve got home in the early evening, he was ready for the quietness of his apartment. The office had been an uproar of noise, the news playing in the background while everyone discussed Escobar’s surrender, his successful transfer to the prison, and it was so noisy, in comparison to the stillness of the morning. Steve was relieved to close the door behind himself, breathe in the quiet.

The peace lasted only a short time, until the quiet became _too_ quiet again, the apartment overly empty, feeling too much like last night, when he’d come home alone and fallen into a bed he no longer shared with Javier, hurting to have him back all over again. He probably shouldn’t have gone over at all, but he’d wanted to ask Javier about – some fucking work thing, and he still couldn’t decide fully if he should regret it. Probably, because a few weeks ago, Javier wouldn’t have wanted Steve to touch him, wouldn’t have looked at Steve like he wanted so badly to be kissed.

When the phone rang, Steve was in the kitchen, poking at the plant Javier had left on the counter. “Yeah?” he answered, and he knew it was Connie by her amused little exhale at his abruptness.

“Heard the news,” she said, “Thought you might want to not talk about it.”

“How’d you guess?” he asked dryly. He found the scissors Javier had kept in the kitchen to cut herbs with, studied the potted plant. “It’s weird. Feels like he still won. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Your mother called me,” Connie said instead, which was somehow worse, and Steve groaned.

“Today?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, and he knew what she was doing, working up to something he wouldn’t want to hear. “To apologize for sending me a birthday card last year. She said she hadn’t known we were divorced, and wanted to apologize if it brought up bad memories for me on my birthday.”

“Jesus.” Steve shook his head. Just like his mother, to find something so miniscule to worry about. To focus on the wrong thing so completely.

“What did you say to her?” Connie asked, and he could hear it, that she was really saying _are you okay?_ He wasn’t. He wasn’t.

“Called last week.” There were dead leaves in the plant; could he just cut them out? He’d never watched Javier do this. It had always just been green, for him, it seemed. All of them had; there used to be more plants, the ferns he hadn’t forgotten to take with him. “Just… felt like it was time.”

“Honey,” Connie murmured. He pushed the scissors back and forth on the countertop with a fingertip.

“Told her we got divorced. Which, you know, Protestants aren’t big fans of that.” He sounded bitter even to his own ears, but it was so much easier than getting _hurt._ “She loved you, and I fucked up letting you go, she said.” Not in so many words, but the message had been similar. He’d rather those have been her words, and not _this is the kind of mistake you will always regret._

“She did not love me,” Connie scoffed. “Don’t feel like you deprived her of an idyllic daughter-in-law relationship, okay.” 

“Then I told her I got divorced a second time,” Steve forced out, and it was hard to hear again, to know what had come next. “And that I’d married a man.”

“Honey,” Connie said again, no more than an exhale this time.

“She really hated that part,” Steve swallowed hard. “Losing a good wife was one thing, but she’d have gotten over that. And – she said that people make mistakes and lose their way, and she wished I hadn’t told her but she’d try and forget, and I could come back to the States and meet a nice girl and try again. Real charitable of her, you know.”

“She’d try and forget,” Connie repeated, more disdain in her voice than he thought he’d ever heard before. “How _very_ charitable.”

“I told her I wouldn’t,” Steve said. “I’m not moving back to fucking Tennessee, I’m not going to _try again,_ and just because Javi left me doesn’t mean I can go back, I’m still – still _gay,”_ he spat, and it was too much, hearing Connie’s sympathetic murmurs, still hearing his mother’s voice in his ear, the way it had gone cold, distant, telling him _don’t say that_ like she was scolding him. As though it had been easy to say in the first place. “Doesn’t fucking matter what I do,” he muttered. Tears burned at his eyes, and he fought not to give in.

“I’m so sorry, Steve.”

“It’s fine.” He started on the plant again, snipped the couple dead leaves. It still looked like it had seen better days. “You and me both,” he muttered to it.

“What’re you doing?”

“Pruning a goddamn plant.”

“You have plants now?”

“It’s not really mine.” Steve prodded one of the particularly droopy leaves. “It’s – it’s Javi’s. He left it, when – when he left.” God, _now_ he felt tears welling in his eyes. Over the stupid plant, of all things. The stupid plant, that Javier had checked on every morning while he made coffee, because it lived next to the coffee maker. _Gives it authenticity,_ he’d said, his deadpan ruined when he smiled brilliantly. “Maybe I should give it back.”

“I doubt he minds. Are you okay?” She added, maybe because he was almost sniffling. 

“Oh, Goddamnit,” Steve mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to force tears away. “I cry every fucking time we talk.”

“You are?” Connie’s voice was gentle, which was somehow worse.

“No.”

“Just keep the plant, Steve,” Connie said. The stupid plant that was one of the ways Javier had made the apartment feel like a different home, one Steve shared with specifically him. Connie had liked orchids, and Javier liked ferns and this little coffee plant he’d forgotten. Even his absence was clearly _his,_ marked by the changes he’d made and the things he’d forgotten.

After saying goodbye to Connie, there was still just slightly too much evening left to justify going to bed. The last thing he wanted to do was lie awake, in the not-quite-dark-enough bedroom; how was it only _last night_ he’d been with Javier? It felt like months ago, maybe because Javier had felt the same as he had in the beginning, like Steve wasn’t going to bed with his husband, but the coworker he guiltily had secret, intensifying feelings for. His husband had been different – had kissed him more languidly, gave directions to get what he wanted, been louder and more possessive. Steve _missed_ his husband, but this – this had broken him in a different way. Javier had been eager all over again, too shy to make demands, hadn’t known that if he whimpered, Steve would pull Javier into his arms and hold him until he fell asleep there. Steve couldn’t lie awake thinking about it again.

He washed the few dishes in the sink, made a half-hearted attempt to collect his laundry from around the apartment, and then decided it could almost be considered late enough that he could shower and sleep without feeling like he was avoiding things.

“Oh, goddamnit,” he mumbled to himself as soon as he got into the shower, just like he always did when he spotted the bottle of shampoo he kept telling himself he was going to get rid of. It was _his,_ but Javier had always used it, and inevitably, the scent made him think of Javier. Especially while in the shower, because he’d frequently slip in after Javier, pressing up against him and kissing him under the water – Steve always ended up thinking about Javier while showering, but this was _worse,_ because he’d actually gotten to touch him again. Touch him, and kiss him until he moaned and relearn the way he trembled and – and the way his voice got deep when he said _did you want me to?_ He’d sounded like he’d wanted to.

Steve had never let himself think about it. It was a line he wouldn’t cross, even when he’d been with Javier, even while married to a man. Even admitting he’d wanted to have sex with Javier – he’d been a wreck, anguished and embarrassed and needy, all because Javier had gotten drunk and begged Steve to fuck him and Steve, completely sober, had wanted to. Even then, it had taken several more weeks to work up to, Steve terrified by how much he wanted to, by what it _meant._

This felt different. Standing in the shower, alone and missing Javier and so recently reminded of how it felt to be with him – Steve let himself think about it. About Javier’s hand on his thigh, asking him _did you want me to?_ and Steve was already hard, already aching to be there again, on his back while Javier slowly jerked him off. Javier was so fucking good at it, too, always had the right amount of patience, and he’d be patient with this, too. Would go so slowly, just his fingers for a long time, until Steve was desperate for more. Would push into him and then wait, let Steve adjust to the size of him and then go so slowly, so gently. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, biting down on his lip as he jerked himself off slowly, couldn’t stop _thinking_ about it.

Javier always made the most needy sounds when Steve fucked him, like it felt _so good,_ and Steve let himself wonder – how good? There was a particular spot Steve could hit that made Javier clench around him and cry out and Javier would know just how to find it, too. Would be able to do the same thing to Steve, make him beg to keep going? Steve felt an uncomfortable heat prickling the back of his neck at the thought, but – but it was stupid, wasn’t it? How could he be disgusted with himself when Javier doing the same thing was the best fucking thing Steve had ever seen? So what, if Steve wanted a man to fuck him – he didn’t think any less of Javier for it. Had kissed Javier’s face and crooned _so good, Jav, you’re so fucking good_ against his ear, worshipful. And he _wanted it,_ God, he wanted it, just thinking about Javier getting between his legs and thrusting all the way into him – Steve was coming over his hand with a strangled groan, caught off guard and shaking through it. And – and it was easy to think about, when all he could focus on was how good it felt to fuck his hand while imagining Javier touching him, but afterwards – he was shaken to the core.

Steve still couldn’t sleep, that night. He was forgetting the exact way it had felt to fall asleep beside Javier. How could he be mourning his marriage while simultaneously being ruined by seeing Javier the way he’d been at the beginning? As heartbreakingly sweet as Javier had been back then, it was back when Javier was still reluctant to talk about his feelings and shy about having sex with the lights on and unable to ask for things from him, and the thing Steve missed most hadn’t been the newness. Before the end of everything, Javier had been confident that Steve wanted him, had reached for him possessively and known that Steve was his. Steve didn’t feel like he belonged to Javier, like this; he _did,_ though, he always did, but it didn’t matter if Javier didn’t understand. 

Javier was back to looking at him like an unpredictable phenomena, and Steve just wanted to plead _I’m yours, you know me,_ wanted to beg to come home.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t like Javier had _set out_ to get Steve drunk. Friday had finally arrived, the entire office was still celebrating Escobar’s surrender, even the CIA had sent over a bottle of whiskey, and Javier hadn’t thought Steve would actually take him up on going out. He didn’t know that grabbing Steve by the shoulders and saying _come with me, please_ would make Steve nod without so much as an argument.

Even in the time Javier could remember, Steve didn’t go out with everyone very frequently. It was the language barrier, much as Steve would never admit it; the guys from Search Bloc that Carrillo would bring along always spoke Spanish, and the few times Steve had taken Javier up on his offer to join in, he’d been quiet and unable to keep up and clearly uncomfortable because of it. Even now, Steve was the same. He stuck by Javier’s side, accepted offered drinks but didn’t say much, looking entirely out of place.

Javier had admittedly gotten caught up in the noise and shouted conversation and retellings of events he couldn’t remember being there for; he followed some of the guys to another table, and he couldn’t tell how many of them realized he’d forgotten the last two years but it didn’t seem like any of them cared, happy to rehash the greatest hits again and again. By the time Carrillo found him, he’d managed to lose sight of their original table entirely. 

“You need to save me from your gringo, Javi,” he said, slapping Javier on the shoulder, “I’m the only other person he knows, when you leave, he follows me around.” Javier had somehow ended up outside on the patio without entirely realizing it, and he couldn’t even see Steve.

“But you hate him,” Javier said, and Carrillo raised his eyebrows, waved his glass in a sweeping gesture that threatened to spill the liquid it contained. “Right, that’s the point. Did you abandon him in there?”

“I didn’t feed him to the wolves,” Carrillo said, although his tone was guilty, as though he’d somehow been seriously considering it. Steve probably felt like the Search Bloc guys were the wolves, anyways; some of Carrillo’s guys had a tendency to make fun of him in Spanish, and Steve had a seemingly superhuman ability to tell when he was being talked about. He’d never say anything, but Javier could always tell; Steve’s shoulders got tense, and he’d duck his head a little, looking away. Javier only ever fidgeted with his hands, so picking up on an entirely different method of anxious fidgeting had taken him a while, but once he’d realized Steve carried his uncomfortableness in his shoulders, Javier saw it all the time.

“I’m going to find him,” Javier said, to a frown from Carrillo.

“Carrillo!” One of the guys called over to him, loud voices from behind Javier raising in volume, “You remember Second Carrillo? What happened to that guy?”

“It’s not even an uncommon last name,” Carrillo rolled his eyes. “And just because –”

“He was like an evil twin! Or – the good one, really.”

Javier slid away while Carrillo was distracted; he had the distinct impression that Carrillo wouldn’t agree with his intention to find Steve. The music seemed to have gotten louder, as Javier slipped back through the crowded doorway, back into the main room. The Search Bloc guys had dispersed somewhat, but he spotted a group of them in the corner, and after he squeezed past a few other groups of people, he found Steve among them. When he got close enough to hear Steve’s voice, though, he paused; Steve was speaking Spanish. Haltingly, but much better compared to the handful of words he’d known before.

“I did not, uh, scared!” Steve was shouting in Spanish, as he was laughed at, but for once, it seemed like he was in on the joke. “No way! You –”

“It’s the jungle, you have to expect snakes!” one of the guys crowed, and Javier suspected that Steve only caught a couple of the words, from the way he wrinkled his nose in concentration, his ensuing smile still slightly hesitant. He was trying so hard, though Javier wasn’t sure if it was despite how much he’d been drinking, or because of it. Before, he’d had a tendency to get tongue-tied over conjugation, and would give up almost immediately.

“Inside the car?!” Steve countered, using the wrong gender for _car_ and mangling the whole sentence with his rounded-out accent. Incredible, that he could sound so distinctly _Tennessee_ even while speaking Spanish. The thought made Javier realize belatedly that Steve sounded a little different now, in English; some of his dragged-out vowels had gotten shorter, his accent flattened. Abruptly, Javier found himself missing the drawl, and he sidled closer to Steve to drink it up while Steve was drunk enough to spill it.

The guys had started shouting about snakes and the new guy and something involving a Jeep driving backwards; Javier dragged an empty chair beside Steve’s and sat close to him, nudged Steve with his elbow. He’d asked Steve to come along mostly because he wasn’t ready to be apart from Steve yet, the weekend stretching ahead of him long and lonely, but now that they were here, Javier couldn’t help but think about the night he couldn’t remember, the first time Steve had kissed him. He hadn’t _meant_ to recreate it, to convince Steve to come out and ply him with tequila, but now, now he wondered if Steve was thinking about it, too.

“Your Spanish has gotten a lot better,” he said, in Spanish, careful not to speak too quickly. Steve’s face turned slightly pink.

“Still sucks,” he said, switching back to English.

“Better than when I knew you,” Javier said; his own phrasing made him frown, though. Fuck, what a way to think about it, but it had slipped out – looking at Steve, listening to him almost speak a language he hadn’t known, realizing he didn’t sound quite the same anymore, that he had two years’ worth of things to talk about that Javier couldn’t remember – suddenly, it felt like Javier knew a different version of him. Steve shrugged, but his shoulders curved in a little, stiffening. Javier recognized the movement, felt bad for pointing anything out. He wished Steve would go back to speaking his broken Spanish and knew he wouldn’t, Steve suddenly looking self-conscious.

Steve didn’t speak up again for the entire hour and a half that passed; Javier kept looking over at him, hoping to entice him into speaking Spanish with prompting little nudges. It didn’t work, but Steve was leaning against his shoulder, thigh pressed against Javier’s leg as he kept scooting closer. Everyone’s voices blurred together as Javier’s attention drifted; Steve’s sleeves were scrunched up to his elbows, and he’d loosened his tie, tossed it over his shoulder.

 _Was it a night like this?_ Javier couldn’t ask, but also couldn’t stop wondering. How had it felt, to spend an evening like this and then go home to be kissed by Steve? Had Javier seen it coming? Even if Steve was like this, pressed close to him and seemingly paying attention only to him, Javier didn’t think he ever would have.

Javier leaned closer, slid his hand experimentally onto Steve’s thigh. “You ready to leave?” he asked against Steve’s ear, and Steve nodded.

They said their goodbyes, and back when Javier had known Steve, he wouldn’t have been able to even attempt that in Spanish, wouldn’t have known how to string together “see you next week” back then. Wouldn’t have been able to do it two years ago, on a night like this, when Steve had gone home with Javier and kissed him for the first time. It wasn’t like Javier was hoping for a repeat, he just – wanted to feel something similar. Feel closer to his own memories. To what he’d been to Steve.

Outside, the air was sharp with a chill; Javier didn’t know what season it had been, last time. Didn’t know if he’d shivered on the walk back, if it had been balmy-warm and perfect. Steve followed Javier quietly; Javier wondered if he was thinking about it, too. Actually remembering it.

“Your Spanish is getting good,” he told Steve, who shrugged again, hands in his pockets.

“Carrillo says my accent’s garbage.”

“It’s fine,” Javier said, although it wasn’t even close. He loved it, though, the little he’d gotten to hear. He wondered what he’d taught Steve, how it had shaped the vocabulary he did have. He wanted to hear more, but Steve seemed shy about it, unwilling, and Javier liked this too, anyways, the way his almost-southern accent became more pronounced when he was drunk. Javier felt overly sharp in comparison; he’d been too distracted to reorder any drinks, too entranced by everything happening around him.

“You don’t have to,” Steve said quietly, when they were only a block from his apartment building. “Walk me back. You don’t – you’re not here, anymore,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay. I’ll get a cab.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve said, although Javier wasn’t sure if he was repeating himself or if he really meant that Javier should just stay with him. He followed more than led Javier to the building; Javier cast a glance at his old front door before continuing up the stairs to the second floor. He reached Steve’s familiar door, but Steve didn’t make a move to produce the keys until Javier prompted him.

“Keys?”

“Oh.” The word was an exhale, Steve’s face falling a little. “Right. Yeah.” He started checking his pockets, and then handed over his keys. Javier unlocked and opened the door, reached to flick on the lights. How long had it been since he’d set foot in Steve’s apartment? In real life, it must have been at least six weeks, but in his own memory – just a few, maybe?

It was different. Javier wandered in further, heard Steve closing the door behind them. As Steve took his shoes off, Javier took a few more steps deeper into the apartment. The furniture had been rearranged slightly. A quick glance at the living room showed no coffee table, a different lamp, framed photos on the far wall. A coffee plant on the kitchen counter. He heard the bathroom door close, and impulsively ducked down the hallway to peer into the bedroom. He’d never been in Steve’s bedroom before, never had a reason to, this bedroom they’d _shared._

At first glance, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary. Clothes piled next to the laundry basket, unmade bed; it was the dresser that made him inch forward to get a better look. Beside the mirror, photographs had been tacked to the wall in a neat grid. Unframed, although he realized the ones out in the living room were probably just like this: photos of the two of them, some just of Javier by himself. In at least half of them, Steve was kissing him, just like in the photo Steve carried around in his wallet. Many off-kilter, like one of them was holding the camera flipped around and trying to aim it back at them. In every one, Javier was smiling.

The dresser itself was nearly bare, just a scattering of change, several pens, a pocket knife and a couple bullet casings. A belt he recognized as his own. A ring.

“Javi,” Steve’s voice came from the doorway, and Javier turned guiltily. Steve leaned against the doorframe, looking helplessly exhausted. “There’s stuff everywhere,” Steve muttered, pushing away from the door and starting to unbutton his shirt. “’S why I didn’t want you coming in.”

Javier watched him for a moment, looked back at the pictures. Something about the carefully arranged grid pattern of them made his heart twist; it was so deliberate, sweetly curated. Some photos were clearly from the same days, some even taken just moments apart, and despite being similar, both in each set had been deemed deserving of the wall. When he turned away, Steve was sitting on the end of the bed, watching him quietly, lower lip caught between his teeth.

“I’m sorry I forgot,” Javier said, the words slipping out almost involuntarily. How could he have forgotten all of this? How could he have left Steve alone with it? Steve went to sleep every night in a bed they’d once shared, beside the space Javier had left empty.

“God, Javi, it’s not your fault. You got _shot,”_ Steve was just looking at him, elbows on his spread knees; as out-of-place as Javier felt standing in Steve’s bedroom, Steve was so clearly familiar with him being here. “It’s just temporary, anyways. This is all just a – a break, and any day now, it’ll be over. You’ll remember leaving me.”

“I wish I wouldn’t,” Javier said, half to himself, He picked the ring up from the dresser, surprised he could recognize it as different from the one he remembered Steve wearing. It was a little narrower, still gold. Definitely not the ring from his marriage to Connie. “Where’s mine?”

“I don’t know.” Steve propped his cheek against his fist, shoulders slumping. He looked so tired, rumpled and worn down, his shirt unbuttoned. “I think you took it back. I looked everywhere.”

“Took it back?”

“You left it,” Steve mumbled into his palm. “Since I was acting like I don’t have a husband, and that means you aren’t mine. You took it off and you left and the next day you were gone.” Guilt was starting to set in, over accidentally interrogating Steve while he was drunk and clearly downspiralling into misery. It wasn’t at all the way Javier would have pictured, though, and he didn’t know how to put together the pieces he did have into a coherent picture. “And I _was,_ you were right, but then you weren’t mine anymore,” Steve’s voice trailed off; he didn’t lift his head, didn’t look at Javier. Javier fidgeted with the ring he still held. “You’re going to remember how shitty I was, and you’re going to hate me again.”

“I know I don’t hate you,” Javier insisted, because there was no part of him that could, no matter _what._ He could be hurt by Steve, but could never manage to hate him. Steve was unconvinced, sniffled a little and kept his gaze on the floor.

Steve had forgotten the bedroom window open, cool air trickling in; the room smelled like the rain that seemed to be threatening outside, fresh and crisp. Javier couldn’t believe he’d lived here, that this had one been familiar, been theirs. Half of the dresser top was completely bare; Javier glanced at Steve, then wandered closer, slid open one of the drawers on that side. Empty. Javier had packed up all his things and moved to an apartment that showed no trace of his marriage; Steve had left the empty spaces, the voids in every corner, the intact shape of where he’d been, but – but he wasn’t trying to get Javier back. He’d kissed Javier almost impulsively, and been guiltily avoiding his gaze ever since; whatever he’d done, whatever had happened – Javier felt wanted _now,_ didn’t that matter? _I just miss you,_ Steve had said, and it had been an apology.

“Don’t tell me the details,” Javier blurted out, “Okay? I _know_ it happened, but – what I want now still matters, doesn’t it? I _know myself.”_

He refused to believe some part of himself, in the future that was really the present, didn’t still love Steve. Maybe he would have felt like this even if he hadn’t forgotten everything, if he’d somehow been able to see this side of Steve, what he’d clearly been hiding from Javier since their divorce. The snappish, angry way he’d responded to Javier back in the first few days, if that was the only thing Javier had seen, he’d have thought Steve didn’t miss him. And now, now that his forgetting had hurt Steve enough, reminded him more vividly of the way they’d been before and wounded him so deeply with it that he’d broken open – maybe if Javier had seen this, he’d be wanting Steve back.

“Javi,” Steve said, “What are you talking about?” His voice broke at the end, and oh, Javier hadn’t heard this voice in a long time. The way Steve sounded when he was suddenly lost, sent reeling, starting to panic. The way he’d sounded when Javier told him to steal evidence, the first time he’d heard this from Steve – aggressive, confident Steve, sounding self-consciously confused. The questioning tilt throughout, the wide-eyed look on his face. It was rare; it broke Javier’s heart every time, made him love Steve so much it hurt.

“Forget it,” Javier said, gentle. “You should get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” Steve said, and he still sounded broken. Javier set the wedding ring back on the dresser, felt Steve’s gaze on him the entire time. How was it possible, that Javier had been here before? That he was looking at this room for the first time, and Steve was seeing him like a vision out of a past memory in a place he’d once been. He seemed continually surprised by everything Javier did, but Javier didn’t know _how_ to be an ex-husband. Didn’t even know how to be a husband. Knew only what he’d been and – and this, this strange place where he’d been secretly in love with Steve but was suddenly allowed to kiss him.

Could he still? He felt too close to where they’d been before to dare doing it like this, to walk right up to Steve and kiss him; everything they’d done only two nights ago felt like a dream, compared to the solid reality of the weeks and weeks before it, where Javier would do no more than look at him and want him from afar. God, it hadn’t felt _real,_ had been a dizzying sort of dream state where he’d somehow gotten everything he wanted. Steve kept looking at him like maybe it had felt like a dream for him too, but a different one. A revisiting, a rewind.

“Are those my sheets?” Javier asked, half as an excuse to get closer to the bed, and half because the distinctive charcoal-colored sheets really did catch his attention; he’d wondered, this week, why he was suddenly sleeping on cotton again. Steve gave a small almost-laugh, sat back and ran a hand over the sheet.

“I feel bad for having them,” he said, “I just – don’t know how to give them back. There’s two sets. How do you tell your ex-husband he forgot his sheets?” His voice splintered a little, at the end.

Javier sat on the edge of the bed; on this side, the nightstand was cluttered with an alarm clock, a stack of papers from work, and two coffee cups. The other side had nothing.

“Consider them a four hundred dollar parting gift,” he said, distracted by the other nightstand’s emptiness. Steve gave a choked little sound. “Linen’s expensive,” Javier defended the sheets, but Steve shook his head, lower lip trembling slightly. Javier admittedly kept forgetting how drunk Steve was, that he couldn’t just say things offhandedly and expect Steve to handle it.

“You left,” Steve said, “You forgot one of your plants, too. I’m not doing a good job with it.”

“I’m sure you are,” Javier said, and then paused too late to wonder if Steve meant the plant at all. Steve shook his head, then squeezed his eyes shut like the motion made him dizzy. He stood, slid his shirt off and tossed it towards the laundry basket; Javier felt like he was intruding, but Steve barely seemed to notice, just undid his belt and stepped out of his jeans unsteadily. Because he was _used_ to it, because Javier had seen him get undressed a hundred times before, seen him in a towel and seen him asleep and seen him getting dressed for work, and how was _that_ the loss that really made something pang in his chest? Watching Steve collapse onto the bed made Javier’s heart twist.

“Hey,” Steve shifted onto his side, “C’mere.” How many times had Javier heard exactly that, sleepy and familiar?

“Hang on.” Javier stood, crossed the room to turn off the light; Steve gave a dejected little sound, like he thought Javier might be leaving. Javier hesitated, unbuttoning his shirt slowly and shedding his jeans before kneeling back on the side of the bed. It was different like this, slow and deliberate, without Steve already touching him or in the middle of kissing him.

“Javi,” Steve’s voice was muffled by the pillow. “”S the wrong side.” His hand reached for Javier in the dark, fingertips tentative on Javier’s arm. He didn’t make a move to switch sides, though, so Javier slid down, reached to pull the bedspread higher against the cool air coming in from the window above. His heart was racing, and he felt almost ridiculous, being nervous about this, in a dream world where he’d done this hundreds of times before but couldn’t remember it. It was _new,_ it was climbing into bed with the man he was in love with and he’d never thought Steve would want him back.

Steve moved closer to him, nuzzled at Javier’s neck and pressed kisses to his bare shoulder. This was easier, Javier knew how to do this. Didn’t know how to sleep beside Steve, how to be held by him, but he knew this, and when Steve lifted his head, Javier tilted Steve’s chin up and kissed him. He still tasted like tequila, but it was easy to ignore, when he was moaning in desperate little exhales. One hand drifted to Javier’s cheek, Steve’s thumb stroking along his cheekbone, just like he had last time, a movement softer and smaller than Javier would have ever expected to bring him to his knees.

It was slower, less urgent than two nights ago, Steve kissing him with a thorough patience, like this was the only thing he wanted. Javier slid his knee between Steve’s thighs, and a groan escaped him when he felt the way Steve shivered, hips pushing forward so he could grind his erection against Javier’s thigh. Javier was still warming up to things, pleasantly buzzing from the feeling of Steve’s hands on him, the thorough way Steve was kissing him; he felt a flush of pride, that Steve was already fully hard and wanting him. Probably too drunk to actually come, but all Javier wanted was to get him to make those same sounds again, needy and desperate.

“What do you want?” he whispered, like being louder would break something. Where the blanket had slipped off his shoulder, Steve’s skin was cool to the touch, as Javier slid his hand down Steve’s back.

“I’unno,” Steve dropped his head to Javier’s shoulder. He was already trembling from the friction of Javier’s thigh against his dick, lost in the slow, steady rhythm of it. “Fuck, Jav.” His hand curled around Javier’s hip, like Javier might move away. Javier wished suddenly, desperately, that he remembered everything he’d ever learned about Steve – what he liked, what he wanted, wished that he didn’t have to keep asking, keep experimenting and seeking it out. There was a thrill in the learning, but Steve wasn’t – wasn’t really new to him, wasn’t also learning _him._ Javier wanted to already know what to do, how to take care of him when he needed it. Steve like this, desperate and needy and recently so _sad,_ Javier wanted him to feel known.

“Tell me what you like,” Javier encouraged. He trailed his fingertips across Steve’s side and then downward, cupped him through his boxers. Steve gave a strangled little sound, thrusting into the touch. “What’d I do to you that you liked?”

“Javi,” Steve whimpered, tucked his face against Javier’s shoulder, and Javier thought that was all he’d get out of Steve until Steve went on. “I keep, just. Fuck, Javi. I keep thinking about it.”

“About what?” Javier tugged Steve’s boxers down and Steve whimpered when Javier wrapped a hand around him, began stroking slowly. Steve was already leaking enough precum to make it slick, kept thrusting into Javier’s grip. He shook his head, though, wouldn’t elaborate, though his cheeks were flushed a red Javier could see even in the dim light coming from the window above them; it took the slight hunching of his shoulders to tip Javier off, that something was making him edgy. Javier slowed down, leaned in to kiss Steve again, Steve sighing a whimper into his mouth. “It’s okay,” Javier murmured against his lips. It broke his heart, that Steve couldn’t feel comfortable enough with him to ask for anything, but Javier was both Steve’s ex-husband and suddenly a stranger to him; how could he ever expect Steve to feel vulnerable with the man who had left him, let alone one who didn’t know anything intimate about him? “It’s okay.”

Javier didn’t push for more, just kissed Steve and slowly jerked him off, until Steve’s needy sounds turned into soft sighs. He tipped his head to Javier’s shoulder and the comforted sounds he made when Javier stroked his hair were somehow heartbreaking. As much as it pained Javier not to have any knowledge of him anymore, he thought that it must have been worse, for Steve. To have someone he’d once known so intimately, trusted with everything, suddenly treating him like a stranger.

Steve fell asleep quickly, but Javier lay awake, unused to sharing a bed with someone, continually aware of Steve beside him. The thought that Steve was sleeping easily only because Javier was back beside him after six weeks of absence didn’t escape Javier. The bedspread had slid down, but he didn’t want to reach for it and risk making Steve move away. He radiated warmth, anyways, stretched out facedown beside Javier, face buried against the linen pillowcase. Absently, Javier reached over, ran his fingers through Steve’s hair again.

And Steve – deeply asleep though he was, exhaled a content little sigh. Javier stilled, hand on the back of Steve’s head, blinking in the darkness that was suddenly blurred by tears. He’d _known_ this, once. This tiny, soft thing, and he must have done this every night but was suddenly discovering it for the first time. How could he have ever forgotten this? And he’d known he’d forgotten Steve, forgotten their marriage, forgotten everything, but this – the entirety of what he’d lost was wrapped up in the tiny, poignant intimacy of the way Steve whimpered when Javier reached for him in the dark. He’d lost so much, and even when he remembered, it was still going to be lost.

When Javier woke up, the room was cold, the open window letting in early-morning air; he tried to reach for the bedspread, crumpled somewhere at the foot of the bed, but the movement produced a small groan from Steve. Before Javier could move more purposefully, Steve had shifted closer to him, slid an arm around Javier’s waist. He radiated warmth, and Javier inched backwards, trying to press closer to him without moving so much that it would wake him up. It didn’t quite work; his fidgeting made Steve grumble a little, but then he fully pulled Javier back against him, tucked his face to the back of Javier’s neck.

“Better, baby?” Steve mumbled, sounding mostly asleep. Javier gave a small sound he hoped Steve would interpret as a yes. He was almost sure that when Steve woke up, he’d realize what he was doing and jerk away, embarrassed; Javier didn’t want that at all. He stroked his fingertips along Steve’s forearm, hoped Steve couldn’t feel how his heart was racing. It was so _new_ to Javier, waking up in Steve’s bed, all these things that were soft and heartfelt. To him, being in love with Steve had meant fantasizing about having sex, everything else so impossibly unlikely. Better to imagine Steve shoving him up against a wall and kissing him, because Steve would never want to just hold him.

Javier stayed where he was, drifting in and out of light sleep, Steve’s arm heavy across his side. It was a while before Steve stirred again, yawning and nuzzling at the back of Javier’s shoulder. He kissed Javier’s neck sleepily, and at Javier’s soft moan, Steve pressed his hips forward, erection rubbing against Javier’s ass. Javier stifled a louder groan. Steve reaching for him first was enough to make Javier’s heart skip a beat. This wasn’t Javier taunting Steve into kissing him, or falling into bed with him and kissing him first. Steve just – wanted him. He kissed Javier’s neck and kept sleepily rutting against him, until Javier was aching to be touched, for Steve to pin him down and actually fuck him. Right when Steve’s hips started moving with a little more purpose, Steve gave a hitching little sound, and drew back. When Javier turned, Steve ducked his head, looking more awake and blushingly embarrassed.

“Uh,” Steve mumbled, and Javier had to interrupt, before Steve talked himself into feeling guilty.

“It’s pretty cold in here,” Javier said, “We could go take a shower?” Steve bit his lip, and for a moment, Javier thought he might say no, but Steve nodded. Javier gave him a head start, stayed in bed as he watched Steve leave the room. His room, _their_ room once, and Javier wasn’t quite ready to leave it, wanted to stay and glean everything he could from what was left. If Steve had this much evidence of their marriage, surely Javier did too, hidden away somewhere. It had to be somewhere, he was almost sure of it, even if sometimes – sometimes, Javier as Steve’s ex-husband felt like an unknown person to him. Surely Javier hadn’t changed so much that he’d have wanted to get rid of the memories of Steve, too. It was unsettling, to try and imagine himself as someone who had walked away from this, who had spent six weeks cold-shouldering Steve so much that as soon as Javier was back to showing him warmth, Steve had crumpled.

He _knew_ what it meant. He knew it implied that Steve had hurt him so badly, Javier had bolted. He knew, and yet – forgetting felt like some kind of divine gift, an opportunity to try again unburdened, knowing only that he’d loved Steve _this much,_ before any of it had happened.

When he heard the shower turn on, he got out of bed, and headed down the hallway. He still hesitated before opening the bathroom door, half expecting to startle Steve. Nothing happened when he cracked the door open, just the shower curtain rustling as Steve brushed against it from inside the shower.

“Hey,” Javier ventured, closed the door behind himself. He was surprisingly nervous to strip naked and get in the shower with Steve, despite having already gone to bed with him, despite knowing that Steve had seen every inch of him already. This was his own idea, though, and as nervous as he suddenly was, the desire to touch Steve again propelled him onward.

When he nudged the curtain aside and peeked in, Steve’s back was to him as he washed shampoo out of his hair, and Javier stepped inside, close in the small space. Steve turned, pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and drew Javier in so immediately that Javier didn’t have time to feel self-conscious, Steve already running his hands along Javier’s sides and ducking in to kiss him.

 _Did we do this a lot,_ Javier wanted to ask, but he didn’t need to; Steve manhandled him easily, clearly familiar with the exact dimensions of the shower, didn’t so much as bump an elbow on the hanging wire shelf, angled the showerhead and placed Javier in the perfect spot, the just-hot-enough water hitting him at collarbone-height. And – and Steve was clearly familiar with a version of Javier who was used to Steve looking at him, because when he stopped to rub his thumbs over Javier’s hipbones and just pause there, Javier squirmed under the scrutiny. He was already mostly hard, and had to fight the impulse to shy away, as though Steve would find it at all surprising that Javier was turned on by what he’d been doing.

“Look at you,” Steve murmured against Javier’s neck, leaning in to kiss him again, and Javier stole the opportunity to peek downward. He’d been able to feel Steve’s cock in the dark bedroom, but seeing its thickness for himself made him swallow a moan. Steve pulled away and sank to his knees, and Javier’s dick twitched in anticipation even before Steve had swallowed him down again. _God,_ Steve was good at it; it was the timing, Javier thought, as Steve leaned back enough to lick over the head, wrapping his hand around the base and pumping slowly. Javier kept reaching to put his hands in Steve’s hair and drawing back, fingers twitching helplessly, until Steve reached up to grab his wrist, guided him into it. “Go ahead,” Steve said, gave a quick glance upward; his cheeks were flushed pink, and he didn’t meet Javier’s gaze for long. “You always – it’s okay.”

 _You always do this,_ he meant, and Javier felt another pang of longing for the life where he apparently routinely had this opportunity, to thread his fingers through Steve’s hair while Steve was on his knees, blowing him. Javier obeyed eagerly, and it spurned Steve on into swallowing him down surprisingly far, and Javier shuddered at the perfect, wet heat of it, fought to keep his hips still. When he looked down and caught sight of Steve jerking himself off, he groaned aloud.

“I’m, I’m gonna,” he panted out, and Steve pulled off; a few quick strokes and Javier was done for, barely aware of the water still cascading over him as he came. He tipped his head back against the tile, breathing hard, and watched Steve shift back slightly, looking uncertain. His cock hung heavy between his spread legs, and his hands rested on his thighs, fingers twitching like he wasn’t sure what to do next. “Come here,” Javier said, tried to make it sound firm, so Steve wouldn’t be left wondering.

“Yeah?” The same voice again, the _what do I do_ shake of it; Javier wondered if there was ever a time where they left that behind, the anxious uncertainty that snuck up on Steve.

“Yeah.” Javier was less adept at maneuvering in the shower, stepped towards the water and ended up with a mouthful of it, had to duck out of the spray slightly as he let Steve take his place. He settled onto his knees, licked experimentally at the head of Steve’s dick.

“ _Oh,”_ Steve sighed out, followed by a deep groan when Javier’s mouth was on him. His fingers flexed against the wall tiles, and Javier slid one hand around the back of Steve’s thigh, took him as deep as he could. Steve gasped appreciatively, and Javier felt the muscle of his thigh twitching beneath his palm. Every sound Steve made urged him on, made him want _more,_ to make Steve feel so fucking good because he couldn’t believe he was even allowed to try. And this, Javier was good at this, he knew that; Steve’s timing was perfectly tailored to him, and Javier couldn’t match that, but he was proud of his technique. He may not have been familiar with how much Steve liked to be edged and whether he liked to finish in Javier’s mouth or his hand, but at least there were some things he could be sure of.

“Fuck, Jav,” Steve mumbled, breathing shallowly. Javier squeezed the back of his thigh and then moved to cup Steve’s balls instead, stroking his fingers back further. When he’d asked if Steve had ever wanted Javier to fuck him, the way Steve had _sounded,_ the needy whimper of it, Javier was sure he liked this. If there’d been easily accessible lube in the shower, he would have gone right to fingering Steve open; _I do,_ he’d moaned, when Javier had asked if he’d wanted to be fucked, and God, all Javier had wanted to do since then was give Steve everything he wanted. He’d been so needy, so desperate, and Javier just wanted to make him feel as good as possible. Not wanting to break the rhythm of it all, he contented himself with this, doing the best he could to find Steve’s prostate from the outside and rubbing over the area. He knew when he got it right by the way Steve shuddered.

“Oh, oh _fuck,”_ Steve’s hands moved helplessly against the tile, clenching at nothing. “Javi, shit, what –” Javier gave him a last suck and started jerking him off instead, kept stroking his fingertips over the spot that was making Steve’s thighs tremble and his breath come in sharp gasps. Steve came without warning, giving a gasp like it had surprised him, too; Javier stroked him slowly through it, as Steve tilted his head back against the tile, running his hands through his hair and panting. When Javier got back to his feet, it was like he’d broken some kind of spell, and was unable to reach for Steve again, to put a hand on his hip to draw him closer or stroke his cheek, depleted of the courage it would take. Steve swallowed, still leaned against the shower wall, gave Javier a look that was surprisingly helpless. Maybe Javier didn’t know how to interpret it, and it was gone before he could figure out what to do.

“You going to actually shower?” Steve’s drawn-out accent was reappearing again; Javier wasn’t sure what it signified, if he should feel guilty about enjoying it.

“I was thinking about it.”

“I’ll get out of your way,” Steve said, and before Javier could stop him, he was climbing out of the shower, replacing the curtain again. There was some rustling as he grabbed a towel off the rack, and then Javier heard the door close.

He borrowed Steve’s shampoo and hurried through showering; at one point, he heard the door open and close again a moment later. When he stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself, he saw the reason; Steve had dropped off a stack of folded clothes. It all belonged to Javier, except he’d only worn the jeans last night. The boxers were his brand and the shirt fit him, though he hadn’t worn either into the apartment; they must have been forgotten, mixed in with Steve’s laundry, still smelled faintly of detergent.

When he ventured out of the bathroom, he found Steve in the kitchen, drinking coffee and prodding at the coffee plant that sat on the counter. The more Javier looked at it, the more he was sure he’d picked it out; its pot sat in a ceramic outer pot, a deep burgundy to compliment the orangey wallpaper of the kitchen. Steve left the plant alone and leaned back against the countertop, ran a hand through his still-wet hair and when Javier got close, he held out his coffee cup for a moment before he seemed to realize what he was doing, and drew it back again. He looked abruptly lost, like the kitchen kept flickering back between the past and present and he wasn’t sure where he’d found himself.

“Uh,” Steve’s jaw worked and he looked away. “Haven’t killed your plant yet.”

“Is that a threat?” Javier smiled at him, but Steve seemed too faraway to realize it. “I should probably get going. I’ll… see you Monday?”

“Yeah.” Steve was frowning, free arm wrapped around himself, shoulders hunching slightly. Could Javier just – reach for him, yet? It felt like something still stood between them, a bolder, clearer discussion than they’d had so far, and Steve’s closed-off standoffishness told Javier not to try just yet.

As much as he didn’t want to leave Steve’s apartment when it felt so much more like home than anywhere else, Javier didn’t have much choice. He forced himself to leave, walked back to the restaurant where he’d left his car and drove to his apartment, the apartment with a bedroom that had never been both of theirs, a bed they’d never shared, a kitchen where they’d never had coffee together.

His first search had seemed exhaustive, but the more Javier looked around, the more new hiding places he found to check. He started with the hall closet, digging through every closed box and finding nothing. After that was the bedroom closet, similarly disappointing. He checked the bookshelf in the living room, the dresser drawers again, under the bed. Javier sat on the edge of the mattress, running a hand over the cotton sheet and studying all the unfamiliar furniture surrounding him.

Except for one piece, and when he was hiding everything away, when he had almost nowhere to put anything, he’d have wanted everything firmly out of sight and would have had few options. Javier headed into the living room, sank down onto the rug in front of the coffee table. It had an open section beneath the surface, where he stored books and the TV remote, usually ignoring the closed storage beneath it. He pulled open the doors, peered inside, half afraid it would be completely empty. It wasn’t empty.

Javier slid the stack of items out in a pile that he spread out on the rug. Several framed photographs, and a stack of loose photos, just like the ones on the wall in Steve’s bedroom. One of the framed pictures matched the one in Steve’s wallet. Scraps of paper with Steve’s handwriting– the first one he picked up just read _Jav, went to get coffee, love S,_ must have been left somewhere for him to find when he woke up or got home; there were a few others like it, each a window too tiny to see through into a life he’d forgotten. A watch he didn’t recognize, a bottle of half-used cologne. A name-change form, that he’d apparently never submitted. Divorce papers with their signatures, and he wondered where the marriage certificate was, if it was back at Steve’s. If their signatures looked different, on that one, somehow happier. There was an envelope, and as soon as he picked it up, the slight weight of it made his stomach drop.

There were pictures, there were divorce papers, there was everything he would need to prove to himself that it all actually happened, but somehow, this was what it took to feel _real._ His wedding ring.

He slid it onto his ring finger and looked at it for a long, long moment. The feeling of wearing a ring was an unfamiliar one, Javier overly aware of the foreign weight of it on his finger, but he’d worn it every day for more than a _year._ Javier had always thought he would never fall in love with someone who wanted him back but it had _happened,_ it had taken this long to get there, forty fucking years, he’d exchanged rings with a man he _loved_ and then one day, he’d taken his ring off and walked away.

Javier took a deep breath to steel himself, but it still made something in his chest tighten, when he took the ring back off. He knew, he _knew,_ it had been wrong to give up on this, wrong that they were apart. Steve had hurt him, but to be given the chance to forget, the chance to see that Steve still _wanted_ him, to be rewound to a time when Javier had felt only love for him – this time, Javier wasn’t going to lose him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please feel free to come yell about javi/steve headcanons with me on tumblr! (icehot13)


	7. Chapter 7

Steve must have heard the phrase _terms of surrender_ at least ten times, by mid-day Monday. He’d even learned it in Spanish, after hearing Carrillo grumble it at least three times since they’d arrived at his office.

“What makes you think he’s violating the terms of surrender?” Javier finally asked, bringing the total count up to eleven. Carrillo had been angrily boxing up paperwork to ready his office for a shift in his assignment; from what Steve could gather, between Carrillo’s rapid-fire Spanish and Javier’s English interjections, Search Bloc was being pointed towards the Cali cartel instead, and Carrillo was furious about it. While Steve wouldn’t have minded if Carrillo had been sent to another country entirely, he had to be a tiny bit relieved Carrillo was staying, for Javier. It was strange, to watch Javier with Carrillo now, to see him more reserved and back to being professional, which was Javier’s version of shy. He didn’t remember that Carrillo had become his closest friend in the past two years, practically a brother to him; Javier always took years to warm up, and then once enough time had passed to feel safe, he dove in without hesitation, and Steve found himself feeling sympathy for Carrillo, who looked at Javier with such a pained expression on his face. Steve knew how he felt, the urge to tell Javier _it’s okay, I’m safe,_ and knowing it would be pointless.

Carrillo’s response was in Spanish; Steve sighed, resisted the urge to check his watch. He’d wanted to stay back at the office, but Javier had asked him to come along and – well, that was it. Javier had asked, and Steve was powerless. He was at least mostly out of the way, sitting on Carrillo’s file cabinet and watching from a safe distance as Carrillo cleared his desk. _Terms of surrender,_ and it felt like a more accurate description of a divorce. That had been its own surrender, and in making his terms, he’d agreed to trade every good thing in his life, in exchange for the pain to stop. It hadn’t worked; all he’d done was lose Javier, and nothing else changed.

“Look,” Carrillo said, finally in English, “I know you gringos aren’t allowed to do flyovers, but I got some photos courtesy of the Colombian military.” He was yanking photographs out of a file box he’d just finished closing up, splaying them out on the desk. “I want you to look at them and tell me if this qualifies as a jail. I _know_ he is –”

“Violating the terms of surrender, yeah,” Steve muttered, to a dark look from Carrillo. He slid off the cabinet, bent over the desk to see the photographs as Javier slid them closer, leaned forward in his chair.

“He’s got a fucking soccer field,” Steve said, and Carrillo scoffed.

“He doesn’t have the Columbian government breathing down his neck anymore. All he has to worry about is the Cali cartel. He’s moving more coke than ever.” Carrillo held up one of the photographs, scowled at it. “Some people always win, no matter how bad they are.” He levelled a look at Steve across the top of the paper, and Steve’s exhale was more of a snarl.

“Now you’re comparing me to fucking _Escobar?”_ Normally, he’d let it go, because Carrillo hated him and he fully deserved it, but it was like he thought Steve had _gotten away_ with something. Steve had hurt Javier, had completely ruined their marriage, but for fuck’s sake, he hadn’t gone into it _wanting_ to do that. It had been both inevitable and unbearable, and the idea that Steve had gotten what he’d wanted and then walked away –

“Carrillo,” Javier warned in a low voice. Carrillo slapped the papers down on the desk, gave Javier an exasperated look Steve had seen many times before. Usually while they were speaking Spanish in front of him, but Steve could always tell when it was about him. Javier’s answers would get terse, like he was trying to get Carrillo to stop, and he’d look so guilty, always seemed to feel bad about deliberately leaving Steve out.

Carrillo replied in Spanish, purposefully fast, and Steve clenched his jaw and waited. Of course Carrillo hated him, and it wasn’t like Steve could defend himself. He _had_ hurt Javier, and Carrillo had probably seen Javier right after the night everything ended; Steve couldn’t forgive himself for hurting Javier like that, and he could see why Carrillo couldn’t, either.

Javier sat back in the chair like he was unaffected, but Steve watched the way he fidgeted, rubbing the back of his hand and twining his fingers together.

“I don’t want to know,” Javier said, in Spanish, but so deliberate and slow that even Steve could understand it. He stood, picked up a couple of the photographs off the desk. “We’ll find proof he’s violating the terms of his surrender,” he said, switching back to English. “I’ll keep you updated.”

Javier left the office clearly assuming Steve was following him, but Steve hesitated, stopped in front of Carrillo’s desk. Carrillo arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Even if he forgot,” Steve said, “I didn’t. I don’t give a fuck if you believe me or not, but I’m not going to put him through the same shit again.”

“You were able to live with it last time,” Carrillo said, like Steve didn’t _already know,_ like that didn’t haunt him. He’d been able to watch Javier be _hurt._ He’d done it himself and watched it happen, and none of it _stopped him._ Not the crushed look that would appear on Javier’s face, the way his gaze would drop and he’d go silent, not the anxious fidgeting or the mumbled apologies he didn’t need to give.

Steve didn’t bother to stay and try to convince Carrillo that things had changed. How could he? Carrillo wouldn’t believe him, and Steve didn’t have the words to explain. Somewhere between hurting Javier so badly that he left, and Javier coming back to him suddenly unharmed and showcasing the way he’d used to be before Steve ever wounded him – Steve couldn’t do it anymore. He’d seen what he had done.

Javier was waiting in the lobby, looking around like he had fully expected Steve to be right behind him. He flicked the papers in Steve’s direction when Steve approached.

“You get lost on the way out?” Javier asked dryly; Steve no longer looked for the smile that gave away the joke, but he still missed it. He always wanted to explain to everyone at work who called Javier an asshole that he _wasn’t,_ his sense of humor was just very deadpan and he was kidding, and when no one got the joke, he was too embarrassed to explain that he wasn’t serious.

“Took a wrong turn or two. You want to drive us back?” He dug the car keys out of his pocket and held them out; as always, the sight of Javier’s left hand without the ring made something in his chest seize up. He’d thought that was hard enough, but seeing Javier back in their bedroom had been worse; he’d acted like a guest, looking to Steve for permission to touch things, holding Steve’s wedding ring like he’d never seen it before. Didn’t complain about the loose drawer pull, didn’t tell Steve he shouldn’t leave coffee cups on the nightstand, didn’t sleep on the right-hand side of the bed. Steve just kept _losing_ things, kept seeing them disappear from right before his eyes.

After facing Carrillo, meeting with the Mil Group guys was easy in comparison. Steve tended to avoid their section of the embassy; their response had been relatively tame, but every time Steve so much as looked towards their office’s door, he could hear the way they’d snickered when he’d returned from vacation, remarried.

“Blondes not your type anymore?” Colonel Anderson had asked, before Steve could leave the break room where he’d run into them; for a moment, Steve had been completely clueless. Anderson usually unnerved him just by stalking around in a uniform, reminding Steve of his father in his police Sargent’s uniform. They spoke in the same way, too, barking out questions so suddenly that it startled Steve, made him hesitate before answering, and then he felt stupid, behind a beat and trying to catch up. “Real different…. spouse, this time, huh?” Anderson had raised his eyebrows, and Steve had felt himself turning red, had mumbled something and ducked down the hallway.

Steve had steered clear ever since, but he’d willingly take up residence in their office over setting foot in Carrillo’s again. At least with the photographs they’d brought, Anderson and Jeffords were all business, pouring over the photos and speculating.

“If we get solid proof that he’s violating the terms of his surrender, then they have to send him to a real prison,” Javier insisted, leaned onto his hands on the desk and scowling down at the photographs. “But we need more than these aerial shots.”

“There’s a no-fly zone over the prison,” Anderson said, “With antiaircraft guns manned by the Columbian army to enforce it.”

“You’re playing with fire if Noonan finds out,” Jeffords remarked mildly, like he was already entertaining the idea.

“We don’t got shit on him without intercepts,” Javier pulled a photograph back towards himself again. Steve leaned against the file cabinets along the wall, tried not to openly watch Javier, so he wouldn’t be caught staring at him. For lack of anything better to do, he grabbed one of the photographs for himself, studied it again. This time, he saw something.

“Don’t need ‘em,” he said; maybe once, he would have felt triumphant, but all he wanted to do was get out of here, everything dulled and tedious.

“The hell we don’t,” Javier gave him a bewildered look; there was something uncertain in it, though, a tiny flicker of anxiety. _It’s not something you forgot,_ Steve wanted to reassure him, because Javier always looked heartbroken at his own lostness.

“They’re not using phones,” Steve pointed to the small square in the middle of the fenced-in field. “I could spot a coop a mile away. That’s how they’re sending messages.”

“No, shit,” Anderson whistled in disbelief, “What won’t that bastard think of?” He picked up the photograph to squint at it closer.

“A pigeon coop,” Jeffords was shaking his head. “Sometimes, I think he does these things just to spite us. We spend shit-tons of money on the tech to intercept sat phones, and what does he do? Gets a bunch of birds.”

“That’ll be easier to intercept at least,” Javier straightened, and Steve forced himself not to watch as Javier stretched his arms over his head. “We’ll head over there tomorrow morning and stake him out. Surely he can’t resist communication with the outside world for long.”

“You two?” Anderson asked, looked at them over the top of the paper he held and Steve exhaled a tense breath, waiting for what came next. “I don’t know how you fellas do it,” he went on, shaking his head, “Couldn’t work with my ex-wife every day.” Steve ground his teeth and said nothing, couldn’t help a glance in Javier’s direction. Javier was checking his watch.

“The amnesia helps,” Javier said, and Anderson chuckled, but Steve felt taken out at the knees. He was almost sure Javier was joking, but a few weeks ago, working together _had_ been hard. Javier had been professional, but his coldness had felt ruthless, sharp, and Steve had been wounded to the core every time. 

“You’ll be back to fighting in the street in no time!” Anderson laughed, because apparently, everyone had heard about it. Steve could feel heat rise up the back of his neck at the memory of them waiting outside a hotel for an informant, an argument over whether to go in after the informant escalating to Javier’s snapped _just fucking wait, what’s wrong with you?_ And Steve hissing _you wanted this,_ because every time Javier sounded angry at him, he wanted to _sob._ Javier’s frustration, his _what’s wrong with you –_ Steve had been helpless, falling apart, wanted to yell _losing you is what’s wrong with me,_ because how wasn’t it obvious? Obvious that he was breaking down, was ruined and completely unable to fix it.

 _I was your husband, how don’t you know what’s wrong,_ he’d wanted to plead, and how could he? He’d chosen to keep himself shut down, keep Javier out; how could Javier be expected to know everything about him when Steve kept him at arm’s length?

As they returned to their own office, Javier was silent; from the way he frowned and clenched his jaw, Steve could tell he was deep in thought, unhappily circling around a problem. He’d do it for hours if left uninterrupted, would keep coming back to it even when pulled away.

Steve gave Javier time to brood, tried to submerge himself in paperwork deeply enough that he couldn’t think about anything else. When he came up for air and checked his watch, three hours had passed, the sun had gone down outside the window, and Javier was still frowning. Steve leaned back in his chair, the movement eliciting no response from Javier.

“Hey,” Steve ventured. The stormy look on Javier’s face didn’t lift, but at least he lifted his head. The way he looked at Steve – there was a moment where Steve’s heart was suddenly racing, because Javier had _looked_ at him like that before, just a few weeks ago, and was he – did he –

“We were _fighting?”_ Javier asked, and Steve exhaled in relief that was quickly followed by guilt. Javier didn’t remember. The way he looked at Steve was the same, though, a mix of defeated and helpless, but the more Steve studied his face, he saw that the bitter hurt wasn’t there, and that made it just a twinge different.

“He’s exaggerating,” Steve said. “I, uh. Lost my patience. You reigned me in.”

He seemed to accept that answer, at least for a while. Steve filed some papers, pulled a few files and finished three reimbursement forms he should have turned in nearly a month ago. People had long since stopped asking him for timely paperwork; Steve didn’t care to examine the reason why.

“Did I hurt you?” Javier asked, after a long, long silence. Steve bit the inside of his cheek; how was he supposed to answer that? Of course Javier had, but it was _Steve’s fault._ Javier had been hurt, and it had been the way he’d drawn back that had broken Steve’s heart. How could that ever be Javier’s fault?

“Seeing what I did to you was what hurt me,” Steve said quietly. Maybe before, he’d have said nothing, just shaken his head no and pushed everything away, but he was too tired to lie, too tired to hide anything anymore. _You were perfect,_ he wanted to say, but he remembered Javier being like this, back at the very beginning; he wouldn’t believe it, would take it as sarcastic and pretend not to flinch. It was a while, before he’d believed the things Steve told him, and he’d turn red and look away, but he’d smile. Before he started doubting it again. The high point.

\---

Steve didn’t sleep much, but that wasn’t new. The last time he’d slept well in recent memory was Friday night, but he was almost worse off now, because of it. One night of falling asleep with Javier beside him, petting through Steve’s hair with impossible gentleness, and suddenly Steve’s painstakingly regained ability to sleep alone had regressed. Suddenly, he was back to being only a few days out from the last time Javier had been in bed with him, and the loss was new again, Steve back to panicking in the middle of the night because Javier was gone, and then waking up enough to remember he was _supposed_ to be gone, lying awake for a long time afterward.

It was early; they didn’t know when Escobar would be sending out carrier pigeons, so the best plan they could come up with was to wait. It was at least past sunrise, though not by much; Steve had brought coffee, but it was barely palatable. He’d forgotten to check if the coffee he bought was coarse ground, and he’d never gotten around to replacing the French press Javier had chosen with a more sensible coffee maker. He hadn’t been able to decide if he wanted to, really.

“I guess we’ll just hope he has things to say,” Javier squinted towards the prison in the distance. They’d parked the Jeep behind a thicket of trees and opened the trunk, Steve sitting on the ledge of the trunk as Javier faced the prison.

“Who knows?” Steve set his coffee aside, propped his elbows on his knees. Waited. Javier wanted to talk about something; Steve could see it. He had his hands on his hips, shifting his weight, didn’t even have to be facing Steve for it to be obvious. His fingers moved restlessly, drumming against his leg.

It freaked Javier out, when Steve responded to things he hadn’t outright said; even saying his name overly softly made Javier look startled, self-conscious. It was killing Steve, not to reach out for him when he was like this, but he couldn’t stand to make Javier feel embarrassed when he was already anxious. _I didn’t forget,_ Steve wanted to plead, but it wasn’t a new feeling. The six weeks had been the same, in a way, both of them pretending like they didn’t know each other as well as they did. This was somehow worse, Steve felt _guilty_ for knowing this much now. Javier was the way he’d been years ago, and finding out that everything he’d kept secret before was now on display – Steve didn’t want to do that to him.

Javier half turned towards him, sunglasses still sitting on top of his head, hair windswept, and Steve wanted badly to reach for him.

“Do you still love me?” Javier asked, and for a moment, Steve was stricken with a sense of – of _homesickness_ , for the man he’d been married to. For Javier when he’d remembered. Steve would have given anything to be asked this, during the six weeks. He didn’t know if this still counted.

“Yes.”

“After – after breaking up, I mean.”

“Divorce,” Steve murmured under his breath, without really meaning to. “Yeah,” he said, swallowed hard and looked away. “After, I still loved you.”

“So if everything was… was still normal. You weren’t too angry with me to – right?” His eyes were impossibly sad, corners of his mouth turned down and brow furrowed, and he was back to fidgeting, rubbing the spot between his thumb and index finger.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t – fuck, Jav, I don’t know how to explain it without telling you all of it, and you didn’t want that.”

“I still don’t,” Javier insisted, and Steve sighed. He supposed Javier had all the pertinent information, anyways. Did the details really matter, when Steve inevitably would have fucked everything up in a different way, if that hadn’t happened? He was always going to be a bad husband. “But – you’d have gotten back together. If I’d asked.”

“Yes.” At what point had he realized that? He’d tried his best not to, but it was almost impossible, when he’d known he’d made a mistake the moment Javier had left. “I’d fucked up, Javi. I never stopped wanting to be with you, I just – made you want to leave.”

“Do you think I…” Javier trailed off. His eyes were pleading. Steve wished he knew, wished he could tell Javier _yes, you wanted me back._ If he’d known that – shamefully, he couldn’t even say if it would have made a difference. Would he have been too scared to get back together, even if Javier had wanted it? With everything that had happened since – Steve felt like he’d been pushed further than he could bear, suffocated by exhaustion and hurt and an entire new kind of loss when faced with a Javier who remembered nothing, and it had broken him. How could he be in denial of anything, when it took so much forceful effort? He had no strength left.

“I don’t know, baby. You would barely look at me. You left your ring and moved out the next day.” He picked his cup of coffee back up, took a sip; it was still terrible, though. Unsurprisingly.

“I found it,” Javier said, very soft. For a moment, Steve didn’t know what he was talking about, and then – Javier’s ring. The one Steve had given him. The one Javier had looked at as it glinted in the sun on his hand, sitting beside Steve on a beach Steve could never find again, and he’d said _I can’t believe I’m married_ in the most awe-stricken voice. Steve had almost asked what he was talking about, but the slightly embarrassed tilt of Javier’s head had clued him in; Javier hadn’t thought it would ever happen for him.

“Oh,” Steve managed. “Good.” Javier still stood there, biting his lip; Steve wondered if it was muscle memory, the way he used to spin his ring on his finger, or if that had been wiped away, too. He’d seen Javier start to do it during the six weeks, stopping when he found his finger bare. The little aborted movement had made Steve’s heart twist.

“You didn’t… you didn’t cheat on me, right?” Javier asked. Steve had known he’d ask, because if he’d lost two years, then he’d been that much more recently hurt by the last person he’d been with. Still, it hurt; it meant Javier didn’t know him, not anymore. Didn’t know the way Steve had loved him.

“No, I didn’t.” Steve set his coffee cup aside and stood; he wasn’t surprised, that the movement made Javier look abruptly regretful, like he thought Steve was about to leave, thought he shouldn’t have said anything. “C’mere, Jav,” Steve said softly, held out a hand towards him. Javier came to him so immediately, Steve almost could have been convinced that part of him remembered he’d once belonged in Steve’s arms, but he knew it wasn’t true.

It took a moment, for the tension to leave Javier’s shoulders, but gradually, he let Steve hold him close, tucked his face against Steve’s neck and didn’t say anything. Steve took a slow breath, inhaled the familiar scent of Javier’s hair and tried to memorize every part of this because last time, he hadn’t _known_ it would be the last time. He didn’t want to forget again, how Javier liked to curl his fingers in the back of Steve’s shirt, how he nuzzled slightly at Steve’s neck like he barely realized he was doing it, how he was four entire inches shorter and it made Steve feel so much bigger than him and so in need of holding him. 

“I know what it’s like to be scared of what you want,” Steve said into Javier’s hair, to a barely perceptible nod from Javier.

The nervousness was still there – holding Javier, who gave himself over so completely, clung to him so tightly, Steve was always so _tense,_ looking around for someone who could see him, because they’d – they’d know, they’d see it, but it was harder to care, now. It felt branded on him, even when he wasn’t holding Javier, kissing him – it didn’t matter. He’d been so thoroughly destroyed by losing Javier that denying it to himself was impossible. He didn’t need to be _with_ someone, to be this way; what he wanted was still there, still part of him.

“We were angry with each other,” Javier mumbled into Steve’s shoulder, and Steve had suspected that might be it, what had turned Javier’s determined pursuit of him hesitant, what had made him look at Steve with a mix of suspicion and apology and frustrated confusion. “I wasn’t – I should have expected that, but – I wasn’t.” He pulled back to look at Steve, and looked at him in a way that was strikingly reminiscent of the way he had during the argument in question; startled, wounded, like he was surprised by Steve’s capacity to be hurt.

“It’s only been six weeks, and I wasn’t _mad_ at you. I just – you asked what was wrong with me, like it could be anything but this, like you were mad at me for being upset about it. What did you _think_ was wrong?” Steve faltered. Suddenly, it had felt like _his_ Javier was back. The one he’d married. Like they were discussing the divorce on equal footing, like the man he’d married was talking about getting back together with him despite everything – Steve was suddenly having trouble breathing around the sharp pang of hurt in his chest. Javier was looking at him with the sad, lost look on his face Steve had come to recognize, and Steve missed him so fucking badly. “Forget it,” Steve mumbled. “It wasn’t important. Just – I wasn’t mad at you. I promise.”

Javier didn’t bring it up again; he went to poke around in the car, find the binoculars, and they only talked about carrier pigeons and whether there was a possibility they could be sent out at night, if that was even doable for the pigeons. Javier’s sort-of proposition burned between them like an ember Steve could feel; Javier wanted to try again. Try anew, try without remembering what had happened before, a weird in-between state where Steve was completely new to him, and Steve had already learned and loved everything about him. What if Javier didn’t love him, this time? What if Steve was too different, what if the timing was wrong, how could he assume it was hardwired anywhere when Javier had been able to forget so much already? Steve didn’t even feel like the same person anymore.

“Fuck, finally,” Javier muttered, when a pigeon finally appeared above the chain-link fence of the prison.

“You got it?” Steve asked, watching Javier lift the shotgun, try to line up the sight.

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t; he may not have known it yet, but Steve could tell he was going to try and shoot it too early, on the ascent instead of the peak where its altitude would change less. Steve watched; Javier missed, twice. When he lowered the shotgun again, he wore a scowl that looked more like a pout. “That’s a fast fucking pigeon,” he muttered. Steve couldn’t help but smile.

“Give me the gun.”

“You trying to say I’m a lousy shot?”

“Yes, I am saying you’re a lousy shot.” Steve took the shotgun from Javier and slung its strap over his shoulder, wanted so badly to kiss Javier for the pout on his face. Javier always sulked about being bad at anything even peripherally related to work, and Steve had always loved making fun of him for it. It was unlike anything else, because Javier _knew_ he was good at his job; there was no underlying anxiety to it, nothing deep-seated, just Javier pouting that things weren’t going his way. Steve would die before he teased Javier about the way people thought he was an asshole, or how he was clingy when they were together, but this, Javier would genuinely laugh along with him at this. “You’re a shit shot.”

“What makes you think you’re any better?” Javier’s eyes were bright with amusement even as he pouted; he reached for Steve’s set-aside coffee cup and took a sip. Steve hid a smile, as Javier scowled and dumped out the contents of the cup upon finding out it was entirely grounds due to Steve’s poor coffee choices.

“What makes me think you’re a bad shot? Well, you missed. Have you ever _been_ duck hunting?”

“No,” Javier scowled at him, “I have not been duck hunting, you fucking hillbilly.”

“Fuck, I miss you.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. He just – he _did,_ was the thing, he missed Javier so _badly,_ and the stupidest things made him realize it all over again. When Javier called him a fucking blond fool in the parking lot, Steve had nearly cried. He’d been back in Medellin with Javier grabbing a map out of his hands, back in a grocery store aisle while Javier put back the apparently terribly under-ripe avocados Steve had picked out, back in their shared living room as Javier folded still-damp laundry Steve had dried on too low a heat.

“So take me back,” Javier said, voice suddenly faint, tentative. “Let me try again.”

“Javi –” Steve tried, although he didn’t have the words for it, couldn’t possibly explain how it would feel, if Javier remembered everything and left him again. But – God, if Javier wanted to stay? If he was right, and this had really given him some kind of – of new perspective on it? What if Steve could really have him _back?_ “Really?” Steve said, and it came out more fragile than he’d meant it to, but he’d been without Javier for six weeks and the thought of the rest of his life being like that had broken his heart. It was a _yes,_ and the way Javier’s eyes lit up told Steve he’d understood that, too.

They were still miles apart, because Javier was happy to be getting back together and Steve thought he might break down sobbing out of relief. Javier was back to the point in his life where he’d hoped for this as more of a dream than anything else, and Steve had spent six weeks facing the fact that he’d lost all of this.

“Hey,” Javier nudged him with an elbow, nodded towards the bird that had been released from the prison. Steve took a steadying breath, tried to remember where he even was.

“Ready to see how it’s actually done?” Steve lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, aimed towards the pigeon, waited.

“Yeah, any day now would be nice.”

“Just wait.” Steve watched the pigeon’s flight begin to level out, and then he pulled the trigger. The pigeon dropped out of the sky.

“Duck hunting, huh?” Javier asked, as Steve turned to set the shotgun back down in the trunk.

“Yeah. Always hated it.” Had he ever told Javier about it? Probably not, or at least, not the important parts. “My dad would take me every season. I hated watching the birds die, and he’d tell me that real men didn’t cry while hunting.” Steve scoffed, but his chest still tightened slightly at the words. “I stopped crying about it after the first couple trips, but he never laid off. Never gave a shit that I hated it, either. At a certain point, you think you’d know who your son is, and stop trying to make him into something else.”

“Steve,” Javier said, very soft. Steve didn’t turn towards him, didn’t think he could keep talking if he was also looking at Javier.

“All that fucking work, and I still turned out –” Steve swallowed hard. He was getting better at this, marginally. Each time he said it out loud, it was a tiny bit easier, or at least, felt less heavy. It meant less, saying it out loud, when he was already living in the reality of it. “Still turned out gay, so. Didn’t even matter. And he acted like I’m a completely different person now, like I wasn’t – wasn’t _always_ like this.” He flinched when he felt Javier’s hand on his arm, but then it was comforting.

“I know. I think that’s the worst part, when people act like you changed suddenly.” Javier gave him a helpless look, and Steve wanted to reassure him, tell him _it’s okay, you haven’t forgotten how to do this._ Javier had never known how to comfort him, because Steve had never seemed to need it, before. There was no forgotten map to this, because Steve hadn’t known how to ask for it. “My parents did the same thing. Found out I was bi, and kicked me out, like I wasn’t still the exact same kid I’d been a day ago. Kind of feels like everything between you before was just – fake, somehow. If this could change it. Fucked me up for, uh. A long time, actually.”

“Baby,” Steve exhaled, at the shy confession in Javier’s voice, at Javier’s shyness about it, as though this was the first time he’d ever told Steve. Javier didn’t _know;_ to him, it _was_ the first time, and he hadn’t already told Steve this, already put himself through remembering this, hadn’t once sniffled into Steve’s shoulder and mumbled almost the same words.

“So,” Javier seemed to pull himself together a little, straightened his shoulders, “Should we go see what this pigeon has?”

Steve nodded, watched Javier cross the grass towards the bird; Javier had never liked dwelling on it, everything he’d left behind, everything he’d lost. Maybe that was why Steve had been so sure Javier would never want him back – because Javier had lost him, and Javier didn’t like to look back at what hurt him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's reading and commenting!!! Thank you for being so incredibly patient and encouraging :)))

Their elation over the pigeon’s message was short-lived. _Delivery due with el Paisa in the tunnel,_ it had read, but there was no tunnel. High-altitude flyovers gave them nothing, tomography reports gave them nothing, seismic measuring gave them nothing. Javier was so _tired_ of having nothing. It had been three days of staying absurdly late at the office pouring over records and photographs, three days of stupid leads like where Escobar could have bought industrial drilling equipment and looking for witnesses who had seen an entire tunnel being dug in the dead of night somewhere, and they still had nothing.

And in another way, in a worse way, Javier wasn’t sure he had Steve, either. He kept telling himself it was just because they were drowning in work, but Steve had taken him back and then gone quiet. Looked at Javier like he wasn’t sure what to do with him, and he was the one with the – the _experience,_ of being together, and Javier wasn’t sure that was the map he’d been hoping it would be.

On Friday evening, they brought their piles of paperwork back to Steve’s apartment along with some takeout, and by eleven at night, Javier was _through_ with having nothing. He looked up from the photograph he’d been examining; Steve was still scowling down at some of the purchase records they’d gotten their hands on, fist over his mouth as he read, silent.

“Hey,” Javier ventured, heart already beating a little faster. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, and we still don’t have shit.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s going to jump out at us at midnight.” Javier pushed his papers into a pile, and reached over to touch Steve’s wrist, two fingertips all he dared. Steve looked up immediately, like his sleeve had been sharply yanked. His navy shirt made his eyes seem darker blue, a post-twilight sky. “Call it quits. Come on.”

“You gonna make it worth my while?” Steve asked, so seriously that Javier almost missed it for what it was, and then suddenly, it was a struggle not to lunge across the table and kiss Steve, at the sliver of a reminder that Steve _wanted_ him.

“Absolutely.” Javier plucked the photograph from Steve’s hand and set it aside, then stood and headed for the bedroom like he was positive Steve would follow; miraculously, he heard Steve’s footsteps a moment later. Javier hadn’t been in Steve’s bedroom since the last time he’d spent the night, and he paused at the doorway, looking in at the room lit only by the light from the street outside. The nightstand had been cleared off, and Steve seemed to be using the opposite one now.

Javier left the light off and Steve didn’t turn it on when he came in, either, just started stripping off his jeans and shirt and tossing them towards the laundry basket, as Javier tried to sneak a look at the dresser again. He could still make out the photos in the dark, just slightly. He still didn’t feel like the same person as the one in the pictures.

“Coming?” Steve climbed onto the bed, and Javier shed his pants and followed, knelt on the familiar linen sheets as he pulled his shirt off. As soon as he moved towards Steve, Steve was reaching for him, accepting Javier with hands at his hips to pull him forward, Steve’s mouth meeting his eagerly. Javier couldn’t get over how much Steve liked to kiss him, how long Steve would just do that. How he used to do it all the time, and Javier couldn’t remember.

“I am going to make you forget all about that fucking tunnel,” Javier murmured against Steve’s lips, to a contented sigh from Steve. “When I’m done, you won’t know your name, let alone whether there’s a stupid tunnel under that goddamn prison.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, like he’d meant it to be challenging, but it came out sounding hopeful. Javier settled onto his side, and he’d even missed this, the softness of often-washed linen, how it made a bed feel familiar to him again. These were _his,_ this bed was once his, and Steve, Steve was once his, too. He slid a hand down until he could cup the bulge in Steve’s boxers; he was already half hard, and gave an encouraging sound at Javier’s touch. As much as Javier wanted Steve to finally fuck him, as much as even the thought had his dick stiffening already, Steve was wound so tight that all Javier wanted to do was take him apart. Slowly, lovingly, until he was whimpering the way he had the night Javier asked if he’d fucked Steve before. Next time, Javier promised himself, he’d ask Steve to do it to him, but he _needed_ to do this for Steve now. It had been six weeks since Javier had touched him as his husband, and it was written all over Steve.

Javier leaned down to kiss him, until Steve’s dick was twitching eagerly beneath his hand and Steve was arching up to kiss him deeper. Only then, did Javier push down the waistband of Steve’s boxers, Steve eagerly kicking them off at the suggestion.

“You have lube here somewhere, right?” Javier said, and Steve gestured vaguely toward the empty-surfaced nightstand.

“What’re you gonna do?” Steve asked as Javier leaned over to the nightstand, opening the drawer and locating a small bottle. There was a tiny waver in it, and Javier tried to sound more confident in response, to somehow reassure Steve that he wasn’t a stranger, he was still the same person and Steve didn’t have to be nervous around him.

“What I’m gonna do,” he grabbed the bottle and leaned back over Steve, dipping his head so he could kiss Steve’s collarbone. “Is make you come so hard, you forget about the tunnel, remember?”

Cold air whispered in through the cracked window, so Javier didn’t fully move out from under the sheet, just scooted further down; his erection brushed against Steve’s leg, and even the tiny amount of friction made his breathing hitch, but he didn’t want to touch himself, not yet, wanted to watch Steve absolutely fall apart first. He slicked up his fingers but didn’t start quite yet, first wrapped his hand around Steve’s dick and stroked him slowly, the added slickness making Steve arch into it. That, he at least knew now, was something Steve especially liked, that he made the best sounds when it was slick and relentless and he’d try and fuck into Javier’s hand at first but then get carried completely away and collapse motionless, moaning helplessly.

When Steve’s moans became breathier, Javier stopped and sat up more, slipped his hand between Steve’s legs and circled a fingertip around his entrance, slow and deliberate, before pressing in.

Steve’s first response was to gasp and clench around him, and Javier brought his other hand back to Steve’s dick; when he looked up, Steve had his forearm over his face and was breathing in little gasps.

“Alright?” Javier murmured, slid his hand up and down Steve’s cock slowly. He could feel every curve and ridge beneath his fingertips, slowly mapping him out.

“Uh-huh.” Steve’s hips pressed up into Javier’s grip. Javier kept stroking him, and slid his first finger all the way into Steve. He waited for Steve to adjust to it, slid back out, slowly, slowly. Steve’s whimpers were quiet mumbles, like he was still figuring out how it felt. Maybe he hadn’t done anything at all in the six weeks since they’d parted; Javier couldn’t help but hope that he was the only one who’d been allowed to see this, even though he’d dared to forget what he’d already been given. How _could_ he have? He’d had Steve like _this_ before, and forgotten?

Gradually, he worked up to two fingers, slowly fingering Steve open until he was used to it; the tangled-up sheet was snagged on Steve’s knee but at least Javier could see what he was doing, could watch the way his fingers disappeared into Steve and how it made Steve shiver each time. Finally, finally, Javier crooked his fingers just right, and Steve jolted.

“Oh, shit,” he gasped, hips bucking up into Javier’s hand. “Oh, shit, shit, what –” Javier’s cock jerked at the sight, and he tried not to imagine how tight Steve would be around him, if Javier was fucking him, how his shuddering would _feel._

“Yeah?” Javier murmured, and he did it again, stroking over the spot deliberately.

_“Javi!”_ Steve’s voice was nearly a sob, and his legs were already shaking, dick throbbing in Javier’s hand. Javier kept going, Steve’s whimpers turning into a litany of _Javi, please, please_ and little sobbing sounds, begging for it like he hadn’t been touched in months and had _needed_ it. How had Javier ever been able to look at him across their desks and not give in? How hadn’t he taken Steve home again, unable to resist seeing this again? Steve was a trembling, whimpering mess, free hand clenching in the sheet compulsively, cock achingly hard and leaking steadily, and Javier was only using his fingers.

Finally, Javier added a third finger, eager to keep going, to stretch Steve out enough for his dick so he could finally _fuck_ him. It would feel so incredibly good, and he wanted to give Steve more, wanted to be deep inside him and fuck him until Steve really did forget everything but how good it felt. Javier didn’t often like being on top but how could he _not_ have fucked Steve every chance he got? After seeing the way Steve fell to pieces just at being fingered open, Javier would have been unable to resist. He curled his fingers again, and Steve gave a strangled sound, suddenly came hard even though Javier had paused in stroking him, like it was just too much for him to take any longer. Javier withdrew his fingers, though the sight of Steve made him _ache_ to climb between his legs and keep going. His dick twitched in protest, another pulse of precum making his boxer-briefs stickier. Steve pressed his knees together, and Javier still couldn’t see his face, watched the rapid rise and fall of Steve’s chest.

“Hey,” Javier prompted softly, and Steve gave a breathy little sound.

“I’ll, uh,” Steve mumbled, and he pushed himself up, pulled his boxers back onto his hips while trying to carefully avoid the sticky mess on his stomach, and slid towards the side of the bed. “Be right back.”

He was gone a moment later, and Javier heard the bathroom door open. He hadn’t really pegged Steve as the type to be bothered by the mess lube made, but it didn’t exactly surprise him; it wasn’t like there weren’t other things he was meticulous about. Javier lay back on the bed, on the side with the newly empty nightstand; a few minutes later, he heard footsteps, and Steve was back, crawling into bed in the dark and reaching for him.

“Come here, Javi,” Steve murmured, but he didn’t wait for Javier to move closer, just leaned down and kissed him. He reached down to rub over Javier’s dick, Javier panting against his lips as he did. When he saw Steve snag the bottle of lube he’d left out, his heart raced in anticipation, and he hurried to strip off his boxer-briefs. He hissed in relief once they were off, erection springing free of its confines. Steve had already slicked up his fingers, and his movements were fluid, as he tilted Javier’s knee gently to the side, stroked one hand along his thigh while the other slid between his legs. 

“You know,” Steve said, leaned in to kiss Javier’s neck, the brush of his stubble making Javier whine. “I used to do this all the time.” He pressed a finger into Javier and Javier groaned, head tipping back to the pillow. “One night, I made you come three times.”

“Yeah?” Javier managed. God, he couldn’t even imagine that, how wrung-out and well-fucked he would have felt. And _Steve,_ with _Steve,_ who was adding a second finger and fucking him in a slow, perfect rhythm. Javier whimpered for more, squirming helplessly, eyes squeezed shut. It was good, it was _so good,_ and he just wanted more.

“Uh-huh. First on my fingers, and then twice on my cock. You loved it.” It almost would have embarrassed Javier, really, but Steve sounded just – just worshipful, enraptured. “Fuck, Jav, you were perfect, you’re just, _perfect.”_

“Please,” Javier whined, and he snuck a hand down to stroke his dick, couldn’t bear not to be touched any longer. Steve drew in a sharp breath, watching him, mercifully kept fucking Javier with two fingers. He had that rhythm perfectly tuned to what Javier liked, too, and when he curled his fingers just so, Javier saw stars. He writhed and arched up helplessly as Steve did it again, trying to fuck himself on Steve’s fingers faster, though Steve somehow seemed to know that the slow pace would drive him wild.

“You gonna come?” Steve’s voice was low, would be a growl if it wasn’t so soft, “Feels good, doesn’t it, baby?”

Javier could only manage a whimper before everything was too much to take and he was swept away by it, coming with a strangled moan that might have been Steve’s name. He struggled to catch his breath, pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead; Steve dipped his head so he could kiss Javier’s face, three small kisses to the tops of his cheeks that made Javier feel more blushingly vulnerable than even getting fucked had.

He cleaned himself off in a daze, only registering the towel in his hand after Steve had given it to him, and when he turned towards Steve, it was to already be getting pulled into Steve’s arms, like he belonged there. Javier sighed out a breath, closed his eyes. It still felt unfamiliar, being in Steve’s arms, and he wanted it to feel like home already, to have fully relearned how to relax and sink into him. He didn’t know how to ask Steve how it felt for him; Steve had lost, not forgotten. His familiarity with having Javier in his arms was obvious with every move he made, and where Javier was tentative, Steve’s touch was reverent.

“Three times, huh?” Javier asked, and Steve chuckled a little.

“Technically, once in the morning, and twice that night,” he said, “Sorry I’m not good enough to do it three times in a row.”

“Still impressed,” Javier said, although the word he was really looking for was more along the lines of wistful. He wanted to have been there. Even knowing he’d eventually regain his memories – he wanted them _now,_ wanted to be here with Steve while knowing everything.

“It was the day we got married,” Steve said, the words nearly a mumble. He pet his fingers through Javier’s hair almost absent-mindedly, sounding faraway, and Javier wanted to be there, too, because Steve was back at their wedding day.

“What was it like?”

“Javi,” Steve’s voice was fractured, softly pleading.

“Or – how’d we decide. To get married,” Javier backpedaled. Steve’s hand had gone still in his hair, and when Javier slid his palm across Steve’s chest, he could feel the hitch in his breathing.

“You told me you loved me for the first time,” Steve said, but it sounded like this was only slightly less painful to recount. “We’d gone away together, and you told me you loved me, and I said we should get married.”

“Oh.” Javier could hear how startled he sounded, but it was _surprising._ Steve, who’d had to get drunk to kiss him for the first time, proposing the moment Javier said he was in love? Steve shifted around slightly, shoulders hunching.

“It’s not like you’re thinking,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t this – this romantic, happy thing. You were telling me you loved me because you thought – you thought it was unfair that I didn’t know, and that it would make me want to leave.”

“Oh,” Javier said, again. It felt like being punched, if he was being honest. From thinking Steve had been madly in love with him, ready to marry him immediately, to realizing it had been an emotionally fraught conversation, that Javier had probably felt on the verge of tears and admitted this because he couldn’t go any longer without telling Steve – well. Javier didn’t have the context, anymore. He didn’t know how they’d been, why he would have thought it would make Steve leave him, to find out Javier had strong feelings for him.

All he could see, from this blinded side of things, was that Steve’s response had still been to marry him. It still looked like Steve had been deeply in love with him. Despite whatever had happened to make Javier think this would be bad news to Steve, his response had still been to ask Javier to marry him, and that must have taken Javier completely by surprise. How had he missed that, about Steve? How could they have been on such different pages?

“Why not just tell me that you loved me back?” Javier asked, “Why ask me to marry you?” Maybe he’d never asked that before, because Steve took a long time to answer. Javier trailed his hand from Steve’s chest to his side, stroking along bare skin; it was almost becoming familiar, maybe just because it was the second time he’d been in this bed and not the first, or maybe because his own slight nervousness at being in bed with Steve was calmed by Steve’s clear comfortableness with it. Surely he hadn’t always been this way; maybe in the beginning, he was nervous, too, as awkward as Javier sometimes felt in front of him. Maybe at first, he hadn’t known where to put his hands either, how to hold him.

Would it have been different, established them differently, if their first encounters together hadn’t been met with awkwardness on both sides? Was Javier only bold now because Steve was so comfortable around him? It was hard to feel hesitant, when Steve treated him like he completely, absolutely belonged there. Maybe he hadn’t felt that yet, before, and that was how Javier had ever thought Steve would leave once he found out Javier loved him.

“I don’t know,” Steve said quietly. He pulled away slightly, tugged the covers up further, pushed a hand through his hair. “It was harder to say I loved you. Marrying you felt like – like maybe I was just doing it for you.”

“You married me out of pity?” Javier asked, to a wounded sound from Steve that didn’t allow Javier to feel betrayed.

“No, baby, fuck, no. But I could – I could give you whatever you wanted without feeling like that made me –” he drew in a shaking breath, rubbed his hands over his face. “I spent my whole life being fucking terrified I was gay, Javi, and telling you I loved you scared the hell out of me,” Steve said, voice hoarse, and Javier felt a flash of guilt, for making him talk about this again, for forgetting the first time. How had it felt to hear this, the first time? To remember marrying him, and to have to repaint it with this understanding that Steve was _afraid,_ that he was in love and terrified of it. He wished he remembered what he’d said to Steve the first time, because he didn’t know what to say now.

“I wish I’d told you I loved you, when you said that,” Steve said, “not telling you – it didn’t make it any less true, all it did was make you feel more uncertain about us. I couldn’t see that when it was happening.” He shook his head, shifted further to turn his face against the pillow.

“Everything’s okay now,” Javier said, but the words didn’t taste right on his tongue, because he didn’t _know._ What had this done to them, what else was waiting to be uncovered? Now, he had the unobscured clarity to see that Steve proposing had been an act of love, but how had he felt then? Confessing he had feelings for Steve because he couldn’t hide it anymore, coming clean like it was a bad thing? He wanted so desperately to keep Steve, though, and didn’t that _matter?_

Steve had gone quiet, but when Javier turned away from him and inched hopefully backwards, Steve wrapped an arm around him immediately, buried his face against the back of Javier’s neck and held him. It _had_ to mean something, Javier thought, that he never wanted to lose Steve again.

Steve woke up first, like always, now that there was an _always_ about them again, now that the six-week chunk of time between now and the last time it had been true wasn’t just the beginning of a permanent second phase of his life.

That could still be coming; Javier could leave him again, and this time, there would be no amnesia to bring him back. Although, it wasn’t like Steve had seen this coming. For all he knew, he’d be the one who got shot next time, wake up having lost _five_ years. If Javier tried to tell _him_ they’d been married, Steve, stuck in a time five years ago, would probably panic and insist that he wasn’t like that and would _never_ feel that for Javier. It would make Javier cry, because no amount of amnesia could free Steve from that innate ability.

Steve sighed, pushed himself up on one elbow. Javier didn’t stir, fairly buried beneath the comforter; he had one wrist curled close to his chest, and he didn’t wake even when Steve reached to straighten his wrist so the position wouldn’t make him sore. He was _tense_ when he slept, unless Steve was actively stroking his back or holding him, slept like he had to keep himself protected the entire time. Steve half wanted to stay in bed with him, to wake him up and start kissing him, and then maybe Javier would do the same thing again, maybe Steve could ask him to – but with Javier still asleep, leaving Steve alone with the thought, it was too much for him to handle. It was _okay_ that he liked it, he kept telling himself. Had told himself, when he couldn’t sleep last night, over and over.

It was – was scarier, though, when it was just him thinking about it, alone while Javier slept. It wasn’t the same as in the moment, when all he’d felt was how _good_ it was, how much he wanted it and how maybe he wanted Javier to keep going, to actually fuck him the way he’d clearly intended to work up to. Everything had always been easier in the moment. It was why he’d ever had the guts to ask Javier to marry him – if he’d thought it out beforehand, he’d have been terrified, incapable, but when it was just them, when it was Javier and his sad eyes and trembling lower lip and quiet, confessed _I love you,_ proposing to him had been the easier thing in the world.

As much as Steve wanted him awake, Javier had been too worn-out lately to justify waking him. Steve slid out of bed, grabbed his jeans from the floor and a clean shirt out of the open dresser drawer, then headed out of the room. He showered as quickly as he could, didn’t give himself time to think about anything, even though the scent of his shampoo made him think of Javier even more immediately, now that Javier’s hair actually smelled like it again.

He still couldn’t figure out a way to strain the too-fine coffee grounds out of his coffee, and he glared at the coffee plant as though it was at fault, as he sipped the grounds-filled coffee.

“I liked the coffee machine,” he mumbled to the plant, though it wasn’t entirely true. He liked the way Javier had treated his French press like an entire artistic process, and how he watered each of his ferns in the apartment as he waited for the coffee to brew. Steve sighed, studying the empty spaces in the living room where the plants had been. They’d been nice. Green. Somehow he’d been surprised that Javier had taken them with him, but of course he had, they were an ongoing project and Steve would probably have accidentally killed them if they’d stayed.

“You’re lucky you’ve made it this far,” he told the coffee plant, poked at its dirt, which was still damp. He couldn’t remember if this one was supposed to dry out in between waterings, or stay damp, wasn’t sure if he’d ever known that.

It was somehow both strange and familiar, seeing Javier’s things around again, even if they were just what a guest would set down when visiting. His jacket on a dining room chair, his keys on the counter, a pack of cigarettes beside them. The familiar sight made Steve remember, suddenly, that Javier had been trying to quit; so had Steve, for that matter, though he’d given that effort up almost as soon as Javier walked out. He hadn’t even noticed, that Javier had gone back to his old pattern, the amnesia wiping away any traces of his progress, though maybe he’d still smoked at home, Steve wouldn’t really have known. He’d never seen Javier’s apartment, had spent sleepless nights wondering what it looked like, if Javier liked it, if it made him feel homesick for the more home-like places that had come before. Wondering if Javier missed him.

Steve took his coffee, went to look out the living room window; he didn’t quite know what to do with himself, just knew that he was waiting for Javier to wake up, as though he was a guest and no longer just the other person who lived in the apartment. Javier walked around it like a guest, no knowledge of where anything was kept and none of his things around, oblivious to the memories featuring him that clung everywhere. It was like Steve was seeing a different plane entirely, an alternate world where Javier had once stood at the counter to make coffee, rearranged the refrigerator after seemingly every single grocery shopping trip.

Javier couldn’t see any of it, seemed so distressed when proof cropped up unexpectedly, like he was continually losing his footing in his own life. He’d been so rattled, hearing that they’d argued post-divorce, as though that was somehow unexpected, but still, none of it was cluing him in to the fact that he wouldn’t want Steve once he remembered everything. Steve was almost afraid to have him in the apartment, like seeing something tied to a bad memory might bring it all back – if he sat on the couch, would he remember setting his ring down on the coffee table and standing up, walking out? If he went out on the balcony, would he remember that he’d retreat there when he was upset with Steve, and that Steve never followed him?

_I wanted to go after you,_ Steve had nearly blurted out last night, when Javier had stood in front of the sliding door, looking out. He always wanted to go after Javier, after their non-arguments, where Javier would mumble something, Steve would bristle defensively and Javier would disappear outside for an hour or so. But – Steve never knew if Javier wanted him to. When he fought with Connie, they were snappish arguments, and then she would reach out and take his hand, still scowling in his direction but past the worst of it all. She was never a crier, and Steve never had to comfort. He just had to apologize and admit what he’d done wrong, neither of which seemed to do Javier any good.

Steve had known what Javier needed, and had been helplessly inept at providing it. Javier needed to cry and feel safe where he did it, needed to be held and needed to be comforted, and Steve was so fucking _bad_ at that kind of thing. It wasn’t an apology, made of structured parts and a plan of action. He didn’t know what to do in the face of tears, and he was too standoffish to be comforting, too self-conscious, as though anyone could see him murmuring soft, reassuring things to another man in his own home, as if he should care even if anyone _could._ It was too fucking terrifying to be soft with Javier, and so Steve had always let him come back inside on his own, had sulked in guilty silence and waited for things to go back to normal. Javier was resilient; he shouldn’t have had to be, Steve shouldn’t have leaned on it so much, just because Javier _could_ bounce back from things wasn’t a reason for Steve to give up on comforting him.

He refilled his coffee cup and stayed by the counter to prod at the coffee plant some more, occasionally spooning grounds out of his cup to dump into the sink. He wasn’t going to replace the coffee maker, he decided, he was going to finally buy coarse-ground coffee, scribbled it onto the list sitting on the kitchen counter.

“It tastes the same,” he muttered in the direction of the plant, “Don’t think I can suddenly taste the difference, or anything. There isn’t one.” He just – just wanted to keep a change Javier had made. Wanted to cling to as many things as he could to stop from slipping backwards, and didn’t that matter, a tiny bit? Javier wanted to get back together, willfully blind to the disastrous ending they’d already suffered. Inevitably, he was going to change his mind, but – maybe not, maybe not if he regained his memories but found that he wasn’t in the same marriage he’d been before. If Steve was better, if he’d let losing Javier _change_ him, make him better, make him less afraid –

“Did you see this?” Javier’s voice made Steve jump, coffee splashing out of his mug and onto the counter. “Sorry,” Javier added, and when Steve turned towards him, he had his head hung, looking guilty, the posture so familiar, Steve was almost afraid Javier had remembered everything.

“It’s okay, I didn’t hear you come in,” Steve said, “Used to, uh. Living alone, I guess. Now.” He reached for a sponge, scooting the puddle of coffee towards the sink as best he could. “I don’t know what I’m used to anymore, actually.” It was some kind of counter to forgetting, a hyper-awareness of everything, of remembering Javier living here with him so vividly that sometimes, Steve would call out to him – _can you bring me a towel_ and _that you?_ and _want coffee?_ and at the same time, feel his absence so acutely, it was to feel the weight of every day in the future he wouldn’t be here for, either.

Javier was still lingering by the kitchen table, looking uneasy, and he’d wandered over straight from bed, had pulled on rumpled jeans and nothing else, and Steve moved to go to him, before he could start to feel uncomfortable.

“Did I see what?” Steve asked, set a hand on Javier’s bare lower back as he stepped closer. Javier was holding a photograph, fidgeting with its edges. Steve tried to look at it, but he was drawn back to staring at Javier, still unused to having him so close again. It had been a hard instinct to beat back, when they’d divorced. He’d been used to leaning in close, touching him all the time, and the days when he would do it on accident, when he’d show up to work half-asleep and touch Javier’s back when Javier stood beside him – the way Javier would flinch, the hurt look on his face, Steve would have to stop himself from blurting out _I didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sorry._

“The truck,” Javier said, and suddenly, there it was. In every photo. Everywhere. Had it been there the whole time? Steve was so tired of things happening that way. Of the clue being right there in front of them. Of realizing Javier had been hurting all along. Of being the last one to notice every goddamn time and then feeling so stupid for not realizing it. That horrible fucking disorienting feeling of looking up and finding everything was different, had _always_ been different.

He took the photo from Javier’s hands and set it down, pulled Javier to him. Cupped Javier’s face in his hands and kissed him for a long, long moment. When he pulled back, Javier’s eyes were wide, a bewildered sort of hopefulness on his face.

“I love you,” Steve said, because if nothing else, he was going to make sure that Javier didn’t have to go through that. Didn’t have to look up and wonder whether everything had always been this way or if he’d not noticed it changing, because that was what had happened, wasn’t it? One day, Javier had suddenly asked himself _has it always felt like he doesn’t love me,_ and the answer had made him leave.

“I know,” Javier said, but it was soft, almost surprised. Steve shook his head, pet his thumb along Javier’s cheekbone. _Not when it mattered,_ he couldn’t tell Javier, because it would make Javier blame himself, feel like it was somehow his fault for not having blind faith in something he didn’t feel enough.

“You’re the best thing I’ve ever had,” Steve said, swallowed. “Even when I don’t have you. I just wanted you to know. I’ve always had a hard time saying it, or – or admitting it was true. It was fucking scary, to say that falling in love with a man was the best thing to happen to me, because that made me – well, obviously, that’s being gay by definition.” He watched the perplexed look on Javier’s face, the shift into affection, apology, back to affection. “None of it changes the fact that you’re just… the best fucking thing.”

“You still love me,” Javier said, almost a question, and Steve nodded.

“Never stopped.” Never stopped, but never learned how; never convinced Javier it was true, not in a way he could depend on. Steve sighed, pulled Javier into his arms and felt the way Javier melted against him, always so achingly willing to be held, to be comforted. Eventually, he’d remember how Steve used to let him cry and not even try to hold him. Eventually, he’d remember the day he walked away, and then he’d realize why Steve clung to him so tightly in this brief, undeserved interlude where Steve got him back.


End file.
